The Brain VS the Claw Machine
by The Illustrious Crackpot
Summary: In order for the Brain's new plot to work, he and Pinky must travel to France to secure the most fabulous diamond in the world. However, with a sadistic author like me on their case, things might not end up as planned!
1. Chapter 1

The Brain VS. The Claw Machine

(The Illustrious Crackpot)

_A/N: "The Brain VS. The Claw Machine" was originally a placeholder title that stuck. Other titles considered were "Je Ne C'est Narf", "C'est la Brain" and "A Troz in the Dark". YOU decide whether or not I went with the best choice._

**Chapter 1**

"Gee, Brain, What Do You Want To Do Tonight?"

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away—from Tattooine, that is—was a small, insignificant and somewhat oblivious planet called Earth. On one of the more lit-up continents (by virtue of neon lights), you would find "United States" scrawled in big bold letters. In the lower east corner of this strange, probably-fictional place, you would find an equally-fictional state called California. If one survived the Los Angeles smog and reached a town called Burbank, you might have been able to get through to a small patch of California known as the Warner Lot. If you scooted off towards the watertower, turned left and headed that way for a couple of minutes, you'd find a small, almost deserted laboratory closed down for the evening. Inside this facility, known as Acme Labs, lived two white laboratory mice in a cage—one, a tall, goofy-looking character, was running in the exercise wheel while the other, rather short and with a gigantic, genetically-altered head, stood staring pensively out through the bars of the cage.

The exercising mouse panted a little, though he didn't slow down at all. "Gee, Brain," he asked the other mouse, sticking his head out of the spinning wheel, "what do you want to do tonight?"

Slowly, the Brain turned and faced his companion, his pink bloodshot eyes flashing. "The same thing we do _every_ night, Pinky," he replied in a deep, Orson Welles voice: "TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!"

Music began to rise in the background and a chorus of deep, powerful voices started to sing.

"_They're Pinky and the Brain_

_Yes Pinky and the Brain_

_One is a genius_

_The other's insane_

_They're laboratory mice_

_Their genes have been spliced_

_They're Pinky, they're Pinky and the—"_

Brain grunted in irritation. "Pinky, stop playing with that radio!" he ordered.

"Sorry, Brain," Pinky apologized, then for no discernible reason added "_Poit!_" Reaching up, the mouse turned a dial and the music stopped.

Jumping off the exercise wheel, Pinky shuffled over to the door of the cage where Brain was already hard at work unfolding a paperclip—a somewhat tricky operation for a mouse. Once it was no more than a simple wire, Brain inserted it into the cage's lock and turned it. With a smart _click_, the door swung open.

"Oooh, narfy, Brain!" Pinky commended, clapping enthusiastically as he followed Brain out into the rest of the lab. "I never knew you did origami!"

"Only in your feeble mind, Pinky," the Brain returned gruffly. He jumped off the desk their cage lay on and landed neatly on the narrow outcropping of shelf on a nearby bookcase cluttered with scientific tomes. Pinky attempted the same feat and simply collided into a Webster's dictionary.

"You see," Brain continued, climbing down the side of the shelf and onto the rim of a nearby wastebasket, "I have at last discovered a foolproof plan for total world domination!"

Making a small jump, Brain reached the tiled floor and turned around to wait for Pinky. Pinky, however, was hovering on the edge of the shelf with tears in his eyes. "Brain," he sniffled, "you mean _I_ can't help this time?"

The Brain paused in momentary confusion, then rolled his eyes exasperatedly. "Foolproof to all fools besides _you_, Pinky," he corrected himself, holding out a hand towards the taller mouse to show that he still..._tolerated_ him.

Pinky's ears popped back up and, overjoyed, he attempted the leap to the floor directly from the bookshelf. As was the law of physics in such a situation, Pinky accidentally landed on top of the Brain, slamming them both against the floor. He grinned weakly.

"Heh heh...Sorry, Brain," he apologized, standing up awkwardly. Pulling the Brain to his feet, Pinky brushed him off from head to toe in an attempt at repentance. Brain pushed him roughly away and continued walking, Pinky following close behind.

"Actually, it's amazing that I haven't thought of it before," Brain remarked as he came to a halt in front of a massive file cabinet. "It's all so _simple_, it makes me wonder what I was thinking during all of my past plots." The Brain usually delivered such egotistic monologues at dramatic times, so Pinky was used to it. He liked suspense before the revelation of their plan anyways.

Using a piece of string and another paperclip as a grappling hook, the Brain opened the bottommost drawer and climbed up the side to the top of the drawer. Pinky followed a bit more hesitantly, making sure not to trip. Once Pinky was perched precariously on the edge of the drawer, Brain pulled up the makeshift rope and cast it into the drawer as a fishing pole. Reeling the line in again, he brought up with it a piece of paper he had hidden there the night before. The scientists at the lab never used that cabinet anyways—it was all full of information about animal rights.

"_Troz!_" Pinky exclaimed, leaning down and poking the sheet experimentally. "That's a _whopper_, Brain! Wait, wait, I've got to get a picture—" Using his hands to frame the scowling Brain and the piece of paper, Pinky stepped backwards to "angle the shot". "This's one for the scrapboOOOOOOOOOOOOOOKK!"

Brain glanced over the edge of the drawer and sighed down at Pinky, once more splattered on the floor. "A remarkable display of intelligence, Pinky," he commented sarcastically.

"Thanks, Brain! _Narf!_"

Sighing again, the Brain descended slightly more gracefully from the drawer as Pinky sat up eagerly. "This is our plan for tonight, Pinky," Brain began, unrolling the comparatively huge sheet of paper. He glanced at his companion. "I'm sure I shall regret asking _you_ this, but what is the greatest drain on money throughout the world?"

Pinky scratched his head, thinking hard. "Ummmm..." he tried, "the government?"

"Good guess," Brain replied after a moment, then quickly jotted that down in the corner of the paper for future reference. "But not quite. What _I_ am thinking of, rather, is—"

"Ooh! Oh!" Pinky cried ecstatically, leaping to his feet and waving his hands around. "I've got it! I've _got_ it! It's Mr. Trump!"

It took only a moment for Brain to roll the plans up again and whack Pinky with it. Unfurling the sheet of paper again, the Brain proclaimed, "No, Pinky, it's the _claw machine!_" Pointing to different sections of stick figure drawings on the paper, he elaborated, "No one can resist the prizes in a claw machine, so people spend all of their money trying to get them. But it _never_ works, so they simply throw away their earnings _pointlessly_ without even a single trinket to prove for it!"

Pinky scratched his head in confusion—a not-uncommon state of mind for the little mouse. "_Poit!_" he discharged, screwing up his eyes in an attempt at rational thought. "But how does that _work_, Brain? Isn't a claw machine _supposed_ to give people stuff?"

In reply, the Brain strode over to a corner of the lab containing a large object covered with a canvas sheet. Removing the sheet with a flourish, he revealed a fully operational claw machine filled with random knickknacks found previously on the lab floor and emblazoned with his likeness. The scientists in the lab were apparently very unobservant to have missed something like _that_ in the corner.

"_Naaaaaarf_," Pinky breathed awedly as he scampered over. He then proceeded to climb on top of the controls, pressing his face against the glass containing the prizes. The Brain had built some pretty neat stuff before, but _this_ was just _amazing!_ "When'd you find the time to build _this_, Brain?"

"Last night, when you were struggling to answer the questions on 'Blue's Clues'," Brain answered smugly. Seeing Pinky's eager expression and the way he stared at the items inside the machine, Brain prompted, "Go ahead, Pinky. Give it a try."

"_Zort!_" Pinky ducked into the narrow space between the file cabinet and the floor, then groped about for a moment and reemerged with around a dollar's worth of spare change. Scampering back up onto the claw machine, the small mouse stuffed a quarter into the slot and grabbed the controls. Whirring to life, the claw moved jerkily at Pinky's direction towards a wad of crumpled-up tissues at the top of the pile. Descending, the claw grasped the wad—but as it was about to haul the treasure up, the claw lost its grip and dropped the tissues, moving back to its original starting position.

Pinky jumped. "_Fjord?_" he started, then confusedly stuffed another quarter in the slot and tried again. Once more the claw failed to carry the desired item far enough to get it in the disposal chute, and soon enough Pinky had exhausted all of the salvaged money trying. He began to whistle appreciatively. "E-_gad_, Brain! How do you _do_ it?"

"Simply by utilizing the same method used by arcade owners across the globe, Pinky," the Brain answered in triumph, patting the claw machine proprietarily, "a rubber band in the correct location works _wonders_." Building up steam, he continued, "Everybody knows these machines are rigged anyways. But once we have instilled _my_ machine into public knowledge, everyone on the planet will spend money on this claw machine, therefore giving us control over _all the currency in the world_, thereby allowing us to TAKE OVER THE WORLD!"

Pinky danced in place atop the machine, clapping his hands. "Ha ha ha! Oh, _brilliant_, Brain!" he cheered. However, he suddenly paused, then shook his head emphatically. "Oh, no _no_, that couldn't work," he pointed out. "What if people just broke the glass and stole the stuff inside?"

Brain didn't even blink. "I've already taken that into consideration, Pinky," he explained. "Just _try_ to damage that machine."

Confused, Pinky wavered with one hand still on the joystick of the machine. "But Brai-ai-ain," he faltered, stretching out the syllables of his companion's name, "usually you try to _stop_ me from breaking things. Shouldn't I—"

The Brain waved the protests away. "Use what little mind you have left, Pinky," he offered not illogically. "Would I ask you to attack one of my inventions without knowing that even _you_ couldn't harm it?"

Pinky paused. "Ummmm...Well, OK, Brain, if you say so," he answered hesitantly, then without further warning grabbed up a mallet and tried to whack the glass with it. As soon as he raised the weapon, however, a small window opened on the side of the machine and a mechanical arm shot forth, grabbing the mallet and whacking _Pinky_ over the head instead. While Pinky staggered around dazedly, the white-gloved mechanical hand crumpled the mallet like a tin can before retracting back into the side of the machine. Brain hurried over to Pinky and helped him steady himself.

"Pinky!" Brain called to him a bit worriedly. "Say something!"

Pinky emitted a tiny giggle. "_Narf!_"

Once Pinky had back as many of his wits possible, he immediately started applauding again. "E-_gad_ again!" he cried. "You really thought of _everything_, Brain!"

At that comment, the Brain suddenly fell into thought. "Perhaps not _everything_..." he tried slowly. The idea was forming in his mind that there might have been something he _had_ overlooked. "What would make everyone in the world use _my_ claw machine? Hmm. If I don't figure it out, I'll never—"

Struck by a sudden flash of genius, Brain snapped his fingers. "That's IT!" He turned to Pinky. "Pinky, _are you pondering what I'm pondering?_"

Pinky scratched his head. "I _think_ so, Brain," he replied, "but isn't it asking too much for Miss Piggy to bring the herrings?"

Only extreme self-control and the thought of world domination kept Brain from whacking Pinky over the head again. "No, Pinky," he answered through gritted teeth, "we must secure the one item sought by _everyone_ the world over—"

"OOH! OOH, I KNOW!" Pinky shouted, jumping up and down. "_Animaniacs_ season 2 on DVD!"

This time Brain finally hung it all and smacked Pinky over the head. "THE PINK PORCUPINE DIAMOND!" he announced, not as dramatically as he would've liked, having been interrupted twice in the telling.

Pinky simply hobbled around, marveling with a blank expression at all of the stars erupting into the air about him. "_Poit!_ I was going to guess that next!"


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Plot Exposition For The Well-Adjusted Reader

In the words of a well-known science fiction author (as well as a left-handed guitarist and answerer of the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything), "It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression 'As pretty as an airport'." The airfield in Burbank was no exception; on a good day it was crowded, the ground was covered with dirt, the airplanes were late and you _might_ end up at a nearby tie rack by following the directions to the bathroom.

Perfect cover for a pair of lab mice to sneak into the baggage compartment of the European flight the following morning.

"Hurry up, Pinky!" Brain urged, pulling his partner up into the small doorway just as the plane took off. Making a massive gymnastic leap inside, Pinky landed, once more, on top of Brain. Brain's army-green knapsack flew off, skittered to a stop against the wall and burst open, scattering several complicated-looking gadgets across the floor. With a grumbling sigh—he had expected that this would happen before they took off—Brain heaved Pinky off of him and retrieved the contraptions, stowing them back in his pack. While his companion was doing that, Pinky plopped himself on the floor of the compartment.

"That's a lot of stuff to bring, i'in't it, Brain?" he inquired once Brain had closed his knapsack.

The Brain scoffed. "Well, Pinky, we're going to _need_ all of them," he replied. "After all, this isn't going to be anything _easy_." The Brain paused as a sudden thought crossed his impressive mind. "It might be a bit late for me to ask this, Pinky, but are you completely prepared?"

Pinky waved the question away. "Of _course_ I'm prepared, Brain!" he laughed, as though the question was an especially stupid one. "I know where my towel is!"

To prove his point, Pinky patted what he suddenly realized was empty air. "MY TOWEL!" he gasped, then tried to hurry to the compartment door. However, Brain restrained him, seeing as the plane's motors were warming up for takeoff.

Back in the airport, people passing the baggage-claim wondered why a lone, pastel pink washcloth was heading down the conveyor belt without an accompanying suitcase in sight.

As the plane took off, the shock of leaving the ground temporarily incapacitated Pinky's ability to mourn the loss of his towel. And, as such was the case, once he'd recovered he didn't even remember that he had had a towel in the first place.

"So what're we going to do when we're in France, Brain?" he asked.

Brain stared irritably at him, rubbing his eardrums. Bigger ears means bigger internal popping. "How many times must I _tell_ you?" he demanded in exasperation. "I _already_ told you the _entire plan_ last night!"

After a short stretch of silence, Pinky began to laugh uncontrollably for no reason readily apparent to his companion. "Oh, it's not for _me_, Brain," he explained, still giggling, "it's for the _readers_. They missed that big part in between where you told me the plan, so we've got to give them some plot exposition! _Troz!_"

"What—" Brain started, then shook his head and decided to let it go. "Oh, all _right_, Pinky."

Giving a theatrical sigh, he pulled a diagram out of his knapsack and set it up on a small easel. Picking up a stick, Brain pointed at a picture of a pink diamond and launched into his speech. "The Pink Porcupine Diamond, as you should know," he began, "is the most valuable diamond in the world. It's a massive pink diamond, completely perfect except for a small flaw in the center that looks almost _exactly_ like a crouching porcupine."

"_Fjord!_" Pinky interrupted, stifling another giggle. "No relation to that one with the panther, right Brain?"

The Brain gritted his teeth. "Nobody will _notice_, Pinky," he admonished his companion. "This is the MTV generation. Who even _remembers_ Peter Sellers?"

"Well, they _did_ remake it with Steve Martin," Pinky reminded him, showing one of his rare moments of intelligence. "I don't think _he's_ dead yet." He rolled over onto his back, staring up at the Brain from the floor. "Actually, he just turned 61. _Poit!_"

Though it annoyed him to no extent, Brain was forced to surrender the argument to Pinky and simply continued narrating his plan. "At _any_ rate," he went on tersely, "the Pink Porcupine Diamond is much harder to acquire than that..._unrelated_ panther one. Thankfully, it is not inconveniently _owned_ by anybody, so the plan won't come crumbling down around our ears."

Pinky scratched his nose. "Why's that?"

Brain cursed his friend's stupidity as he whacked Pinky with his pointer. "Because it would take a lot of effort to steal it from someone, and when it appeared in my claw machine we would both be put away for thievery and fraud!" He shivered ominously. "_Then_ we'd end up on _Oprah_."

The Brain braced himself for another interruption by Pinky, but none was forthcoming. However, this was because Pinky had stopped paying attention and was now playing with a claw machine stowed in the compartment. Just like the one Brain had built, it refused to give Pinky the prizes no matter how many times he tried to grab one.

"PINKY!" the Brain shouted, the force of his yell knocking Pinky off of the machine. He was thoroughly fed up—after all, it was somewhat early in the morning. It had taken some effort to sneak undetected out of the lab, but he thought that a year's worth of back issues of _Mitochondria in Action_ would be enough to distract them for the remainder of the day. Brain glared down at Pinky. "Do you want to inform your 'readers' or _not?_" he threatened imperiously.

"_Narf!_" Pinky answered sheepishly, sitting back down again. "Sorry."

Brain glared at his companion for a moment as if to dare him to interrupt again, then continued his narration. "Unbeknownst to the common man—_or_ the common mouse," he added quickly before Pinky could interject that point, "the diamond was the property of French noble Pierre Guillame le Gendarme de Frou-Frou-Poo-Poo-Too-Tee-Lou until it was stolen." He pointed to a picture of a haughty-looking man with a turned-down nose and graying hairs, posing next to the diamond. "The diamond passed through many hands before French inspector Jacques Mousseau tracked it down and recovered it, apprehending all of the crooks at the same time." At this point, Brain rolled his eyes in anticipation of the next line he was about to deliver. "However, Jacques was a rather stupid man, and attempted to transport the diamond back to its original owner _himself_ while he was driving _the same carriage transporting the criminals_."

Despite the Brain's precautions, Pinky broke in with a raucous laugh that lasted for an entire minute. The Brain tapped his foot impatiently. At last winding down, Pinky wiped the last tears from his eyes and chortled, "_Zort! _Boy, he sounds pretty dumb, Brain. What did _he_ look like?"

Brain produced a photograph of an individual who could only be described as a mustachioed, human version of Pinky. Pinky chuckled a bit more as he looked at the picture.

"My, surprisingly good-looking fellow, i'in't he?" he remarked.

The Brain caved in again and conked Pinky over the head with the rolled-up photograph. "_If_ I may _continue_," he growled, then stiffly pointed his stick at a location on a map attached to his diagram. From the best that could be seen of it, the location appeared to be an insignificant little quadrant of unpopulated, rural land. "Mousseau's carriage was hijacked approximately here, by the criminals he was conveying," Brain narrated, tracing an "X" in the air above the map. "He was struck on the head by a blunt object and left for dead while the criminals escaped. They were caught soon afterwards, however, and arrested, but the Pink Porcupine Diamond was never recovered. As for Mousseau, after a few days he was found wandering aimlessly some miles away thinking he was a chicken. Apparently the blow to his head had given him amnesia, making him unable to tell the police anything about where his carriage crashed _or_ where the Pink Porcupine was!"

Still somewhat dazed from the loss of his already-deficient brain cells, Pinky applauded loudly. "That's some story, Brain!" he commended, then leaned forwards expectantly. "_Poit!_ What happened to, uhmmm, 'Moose-oh' after that?"

"He did the only thing to be _done_ in those situations, Pinky," Brain replied. "He sold the story to Hollywood and became a burger-flipper at the nearest fast food restaurant."

"With FRENCH fries!"

Brain rolled his eyes. "_Yes_, Pinky," he answered sarcastically, "with FRENCH fries." Switching back into business mode, Brain concluded, "Though Mousseau's carriage has been found since over in _this_ location"—He pointed at a spot on the map not too far away from the other place—"the Pink Porcupine still has not been found...though several dozen jars of rotten escargot were stored in the back. The carriage has not been removed from the spot it was discovered in, which makes it much easier for us to search in those places clumsy humans might have _missed_, giving us the PINK PORCUPINE!"

His speech concluded, Brain folded up the diagram and easel and put them back in his knapsack. As he was doing this, Pinky sat thinking—no small task for him. At length, he asked, "_Ess-car-goh_...that's that stuff with the snails in it, right Brain?"

Brain shuddered, reshouldering his backpack. "Yes. A _ghastly_ concoction. Frenchmen like the most _disgusting_ foods imaginable."

Pinky shrugged, plopping himself down on the floor. "I dunno, Brain," he disagreed, "I _like_ snails. _Troz!_ Especially if they're fried up in _paste_...Ooh, and with those little green vegetable-things that look like maggots on the side!" He licked his lips hungrily, rubbing his stomach. "Can't get much better than that, Brain!"

Brain looked up at Pinky again from an airsick bag with a greener face and more pronounced bags beneath his eyes. "Pinky," he wheezed, "you'll be a _genius_ in France."

"_Narf!_" Pinky's eyes lit up happily as he began to dance around. "D'you think they'll let me wear a poodle hat?" he asked.

Brain sighed and used the bag again as their flight over the Atlantic drew onwards.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

A Bumpy Arrival With Some Pretty Good Gags

After quite a long while, a small alarm clock in Brain's knapsack went off. The sound jolted Brain out of a half-sleep (and a rather pleasant dream involving the hamster Snowball and a vat of hot lava), sending him scurrying across the luggage compartment to where Pinky was also dozing.

"PINKY!" Brain urged, shaking him awake. "It's TIME! We must drop to the area where Mousseau's carriage is!"

Yawning widely, Pinky shrugged on his own backpack as the Brain heaved the door to the compartment open. The wind resistance outside the airplane nearly tugged the little mouse out the door, but Brain held on to the frame as Pinky stumbled up behind him. Strapping on their crash helmets, Brain surveyed the clouds and lay of the land below. "3..." he muttered, glancing quickly at the clock again before shoving it back into his knapsack, "2...1...GO!"

He and Pinky jumped out of the compartment and into the open air, opening their parachutes as they plummeted. Yelling over the sound of the slipstream tugging them along, Pinky asked, "HEY BRAIN, HOW DO YOU KNOW WE'LL LAND WHERE THE CARRIAGE IS?"

Brain squirmed in midair, trying to steady himself against the queasy feeling of vertigo he was getting. "IT'S RATHER SIMPLE, PINKY," he replied, also forced to yell over the roaring wind. "BEFORE WE LEFT, I TOOK THE LIBERTY OF HACKING INTO ACME AIRLINES' FILES. I FOUND THE ROUTE THEIR EUROPEAN FLIGHT TAKES AND MAPPED IT OUT, TIMING EVERYTHING DOWN TO THE SPLIT-SECOND TO LAND US WHERE WE WANT TO GO."

Shading his eyes, Pinky looked up at the airplane far above them. "UM, BRAIN..." he yelled nervously, "IS 'ACME' SPELLED 'A-J-A-X'?"

The queasy feeling in Brain's stomach grew, and he got the distinct impression that not all of it was vertigo. "NO, OF _COURSE_ NOT!" he replied.

Pinky pointed upwards at the rapidly receding plane. "THEN I THINK WE MIGHT HAVE GOTTEN MIXED UP AT THE AIRPORT!"

The two mice looked downwards as one. The landscape coming up rather quickly to meet them was certainly _not_ a rural countryside. Instead, it was the point on top of the Eiffel Tower.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"

In accordance with _Tex Avery's Rules and Regulations for Falling Characters_, Pinky and the Brain landed directly on the _very_ sharp point of the building. And, when you added in Chuck Jones's chapter, both mice's parachutes were snagged on the point and ripped off. So, falling (and screaming) quite freely, Pinky and the Brain landed solidly on the awning of a café below and bounced directly into a mug of boiling hot coffee for an impeccably-timed Friz Freleng finish.

Scalded and out of breath, Brain floundered to the top of the cup and grasped the rim, panting heavily. Pinky joined him in a moment, spitting out droplets of coffee that he had accidentally inhaled. Brain blinked in amazement, his eyes widening. "I can't believe it," he spluttered. "We're—we're _alive!_ We're ALIVE!"

At that moment, the owner of the coffee returned to the small café table, a woman with dark brown hair, a red suit and skirt as well as a matching beret. Grasping the handle of the mug, she started to lift it up when suddenly she shrieked and dropped the cup. "Le EEEEEEEEK!" she screeched as Pinky and Brain scrambled dazedly out of the cup. Soon enough, the owner of the café had run out with a broom, shouting things in French and swinging at the mice.

"_Zort!_ Watch out!" Pinky cried pointlessly as he and Brain scurried out of reach of the café master, gaining a few more bruises to their credit. Once they had finally outrun him, the two collapsed on a nearby sidewalk...of course, getting stepped on by random passerby. At long last, however, Brain pointed out a secluded back alley where they would hopefully be left alone long enough to gather their wits. Dragging their battered and beaten selves into the shadows, they finally were able to lie down and regain their usual lung capacity without too much physical pain.

At length, Brain sat up and pulled a map out of his backpack, still breathing heavily. He spread the map and stared at it, trying to make sense of where they were. Groggily trying to recall as much as possible from their fall, Brain calculated their trajectory off of the Eiffel Tower and attempted to approximate their current location. Paris was a big city, though, and the Tower was completely surrounded on all possible sides by cafés, any one of which might have been where they had landed. But whichever alleyway it was that they were in now, they were still quite a long ways from the province of Auvergne, the location of Mousseau's carriage. Brain sighed and looked up to see if Pinky could possibly have been any help in finding out where they were—but then he gasped.

Pinky had disappeared.

Brain began to panic, shoving the map flusteredly back into his pack as he scrambled out to the mouth of the alley. "PINKY?" he cried, glancing wildly from side to side. The streets were littered with dozens of humans, but no gangly lab mouse could be seen. Brain's pulse raced. Pinky couldn't even go outside back at the lab without getting into trouble, so who _knew_ what kind of predicament he could get into alone in a foreign country?

"PINKY!" Brain yelled again as he took off into the middle of the street, only narrowly missing getting run down by trampling feet and cars. He started running aimlessly, looking everywhere about him for a trace of Pinky's presence. Had he used his immensely superior frontal lobe, locating his companion would have been a simple task; however, Pinky's sudden disappearance combined with the recent merry-go-round of pain had clouded his judgment. "PINKY!" The streets remained unresponsive. "PINKY!"

Just as the Brain was about to break down, a clue came down from heaven.

"_Narf!_"

Brain sat up in a second and whirled around. Directly behind him was an arcade, and through the window he could spot Pinky tackling a French claw machine with little success. Yes, sure enough, that _was_ without a doubt Pinky. His panic giving way to annoyance, Brain stomped into the arcade. Pinky looked up and gave Brain a jovial wave.

"Oh! Hello, Brain! _Zort!_" he called happily, inserting a few salvaged Euros into the slot reading "_Introduisez votre pièce ici_", which translation should seem obvious in the given context. Humming pleasantly to the tune of "The Cheese Roll Call", he maneuvered the joystick on the machine in an attempt to salvage a stuffed Runt doll. The claw continually lost its grip, though, and refused to give up any of its bounty no matter how many Euros Pinky fed it. Just as the mouse was about to scramble beneath the machine to get more, the Brain clambered up onto the controls next to him. Pinky glanced up expectantly, only to be delivered another blow to the head.

"Utter _nitwit!_" Brain reprimanded angrily as Pinky rubbed his head in confusion. Brain was almost never _this_ mad. "I had no idea where you'd gone off to! Could you even _imagine_ that it would matter if the two of us were separated?"

Pinky was speechless. "Br-_Brain_," he gasped. "Do you mean—you actually _do_ care about me?" He amended his request. "Even a _little?_"

Brain conked him again before turning his back on Pinky. "Of _course_ not, Pinky," he grumbled. "_You're_ the one that has our passports."

Pinky's ears drooped as the Brain descended from the machine. "Oh," he responded dejectedly—then he suddenly remembered that they had stowed away on the plane. Ergo, they _had_ no passports, much less any that Pinky had with him.

"_Troz!_" he beamed as he dropped down off of the machine and followed Brain out the door.

————————————————————

In the seclusion of a window ledge at another café, Brain unfurled the map again and began to study it while Pinky innocently swiped morsels of food from passing waiters' trays. After much contemplation, the use of a ruler and a street sign standing outside, Brain finally conjectured a rough idea of where they were. However, they were still extremely far away from the location of Mousseau's carriage and, he hoped, the location of the Pink Porcupine. Finally, Brain sat up with a sigh and turned to Pinky, who at that moment was ingesting something that looked disturbingly like tar. Brain turned back again quickly.

"Well, Pinky," he asked, at a loss for any constructive ideas, "how would you propose we get to Auvergne?"

Pinky scratched his head, also sticking his tongue out of the corner of his mouth as though that would help loosen up the machinations of his mind. "Ummm..." he tried, "well, what if we walked?"

Brain shot him a withering look. "Pinky, it's nearly three hundred miles from here."

Pondering a little more, Pinky cocked his head. "Well, if we don't start _now_, we'll _never_ get there, will we?" he pointed out.

Obviously Pinky had no idea that a mile was quite a bit longer than a foot.

The Brain sighed as Yakko, Wakko and Dot ran by in the background for no apparent reason. "Hmmm..." he mulled. Back at Acme Labs, there was usually a convenient motorcycle or minivan sitting outside that they could temporarily borrow, making use of several of Brain's mechanisms to allow them to reach the pedals and the steering wheels at the same time. But Paris was a crowded city, and he wasn't sure if a few lab mice could even _enter_ an empty car without somebody noticing. Besides which, he didn't have the proper materials to construct any long-reach steering mechanisms. He sighed annoyedly. Even with his immensely superior brain, he hadn't foreseen taking the wrong plane and landing in Paris—if he had, he would have brought more supplies.

Brain's stomach rumbled slightly, but he tried his best to ignore it. Just the sight of Pinky gobbling down morsel after morsel of repugnant-looking food was enough to dissuade him from eating anyways. He sat back, nearly defeated, trying desperately to think of a way to get to Mousseau's carriage, find the diamond and return to the cheese and food pellets at the lab before he starved to death. He didn't think that a cab would go as far as Auvergne (though in one of those idiotic _Three Stooges_ shorts that Pinky watched, they had taken a cab straight from America to Egypt), and the same story with a bus. If they could just get to the general area of Auvergne, he was _sure_ they could manage the rest of the way to the wreck of the carriage...

"_Poit!_" Pinky interjected, interrupting Brain's line of thought. Brain glanced upwards in annoyance to see Pinky pressed against the window with his tongue sticking out. Pinky began to jump up and down, staring gleefully out at the barges loading up at the river. "That looks like fun, Brain!" he prattled enthusiastically. "Can we please go on a boat ride? I've never _been_ on a real _boat_ before...well, there was that submarine when we raised the _Titanic_ and all, and some other stuff I can't remember because of my short attention spa—Oh hey look, there's a butterfly!—Oh, wait...Oh yeah, but can we please go on the boat? Pleeeeeeeeeeeease, Brain?"

The Brain was about to pass a comment on Pinky's stupidity on wanting a boat ride while they were _stranded_ in the middle of _Paris_ when the revelation suddenly struck him. He scurried up to the window and pressed himself against it, squinting to see the boats through the layer of glass. The idea grew more solid now, and trembling in the thought of triumph Brain pulled open the map. He hardly dared believe his eyes—France was filled with intersecting rivers and waterways, making a pathway that could lead them to Auvergne!

"YES!" Brain cried aloud. And again. "YESSSSSSS!"

Pinky turned around dejectedly. "Oh, come _on_, Brain, why do you have to say 'no'? _Zort!_" he complained. "Every time I want to do something, you—" He broke off in realization and his eyes lit up. "Did...Brain, did you say 'yes'? Did I ask something irrelevant and silly and did you say _yes?_"

Brain was shoving the map back into his backpack with megalomaniacal fervor. "Of _course_ I did, Pinky!" he replied somewhat giddily. "Your childish whims actually solved our problem of transport!"

Pinky scratched his head. "We're going to _swim_ there?"

"YES!" Brain responded automatically, then shook his head. "No! _We'll hitch a ride on the barges!_ We'll end up in Auvergne in _no_ time!"

"YAY! _Narf!_" Pinky whooped, skipping across the windowledge. Unfortunately, he skipped too close to the edge of the sill and fell off. Lying on his back on the floor, he started to laugh uncontrollably—that is, until he paused in thought. "No no no...that won't work, Brain."

Brain looked down at him from the ledge. "Why not?"

"Well," his companion answered as though it was the most obvious thing in the world, "if you row row row a boat gently down the stream, and life _is_ but a dream, you can't _really_ be on the stream...right?"

Not a moment afterwards, Pinky became temporarily incapacitated by the weight of a mouse-sized army green backpack landing directly on his cranium.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Of Boat Trips And Severe Pain

Huddled just around the corner from the harbor, Pinky and the Brain watched the boats intently. Well, Brain watched the boats intently; Pinky was watching a large French skunk chasing a black-and-white pussycat through the streets. When the humor of that wore thin, though, Pinky directed his always sparsely applied attention towards whatever it was Brain was doing.

"Brain, why're we watching the boats?" Pinky asked after what was maybe five seconds.

Brain rolled his eyes emphatically. "Oh, I don't _know_, Pinky," he answered with a voice practically swimming in sarcasm. "We don't have to perhaps _sneak on_ or anything. It's not as if they wouldn't let us on if we just _asked_."

The sound of Pinky's mental gears attempting to translate the statement was almost audible. Once the process was done with and he was satisfied that Brain had just invited him to go and ask if they could ride the barges, Pinky pulled a French phrasebook out of Brain's backpack and skipped happily to the harbor.

The Brain didn't notice Pinky's departure, instead pulling a pair of self-made mouse-size binoculars out of his backpack to better watch the harbor. "This will take very precise timing," he explained to the mouse he _thought_ was still there. "We must enter the barge only at the very last second before they depart so as not to be detected and disposed of. So that boat over _there_..." He adjusted the binoculars's lenses to bring the harbor into better focus and spotted a huge, burly French human hauling raw coal onto the barge Brain was staking out. The Brain was trying to decide roughly when the coal capacity of the barge would be filled when a tall, gawky white mouse approached the human. Sensing something familiar about the mouse, he focused the lenses even further while the mouse pulled out a phrasebook and tried to get the man's attention. Brain snorted in laughter.

"Pinky, look over there!" Brain addressed the empty air beside him. "There's a mouse over there that looks just _like_ you!" He chuckled again before noticing the uncharacteristic silence. At last, he looked up. "Pinky?" he queried, then suddenly realized that the mouse who looked like Pinky actually _was_ Pinky.

At that moment, though, Pinky had succeeded in getting the attention of the coal-hauling human. "Ummm..." he began, rifling through the pages of the tourist manual for a proper phrase, "Ummm...'_Bon Jour_'? Ah, '_Koh Moh Say Wah_'?"

Shattering the general speed limit for small rodents, Brain was immediately on the scene and nearly tackled Pinky. "Pinky, you FOOL!" he shouted panickedly. "You're giving away our presence!"

Pinky chuckled with the sort of carelessness one can only find in a head whose single function is to keep the owner's ears from touching. "Oh, no I'm _not_, Brain," he replied. "We don't _have_ any presents for them. I'm just asking to ride the boats, like you _told_ me to." Turning back to the husky human, who was now surrounded by more curious, large men, Pinky flipped through the guidebook and selected a phrase. " 'May we get on your boat'...'May we get on your boat'...Umm, '_Seel voo play_,' uhhh...'_vos lobes d'orreilles sont comme têtes de poisson_'?"

Instantly the men's demeanor changed from bewildered to threatening as they immediately began to crack their knuckles and advance on the mice. Brain shrank back behind Pinky, who at this time had actually started to look a little concerned.

"Pinky...?" the Brain asked slowly as he trembled. "...What did you tell them?"

"_Poit!_" Pinky gulped as they started backing away. "I _think_ I said 'May we get on your boat'..."

A small, grungy-looking French mouse covered from head to toe in coal smudges popped up from the raw coal deposits on the barge. " '_May we get on your boat_' NOTHING!" he scoffed in a thick accent as he watched the men advance on Pinky and the Brain. "You just said that their earlobes looked like fish heads!"

Brain did not have time to pass a sardonic comment on the situation before the men pounced. Raising their fists above the small mice, the—

**Please excuse the interruption. A scene of**

**unimaginable violence has just erupted which**

**shall not be described out of consideration for those readers**

**with heart conditions, feeble constitutions and memberships in**

**the Humane Society. We apologize for the inconvenience and**

**ask that you please put down your pitchforks while the**

**story resumes.**

Having finished with their offenders, the large men tossed the two mice into the coal pile on a nearby barge and stomped off, saying several nasty things that our heroes certainly hoped were in French. Sitting up abruptly and painfully, the newly blackened Pinky slapped the side of his head until all of the coal dust had come out of his ears. "Say, Brain," he asked woozily, "d'you think that guidebook was like the one in that episode of _Monty Python_? The one where they purposely mistranslate phrases so the foreigners will say stupid things?"

Brain sighed and reconstructed as much of his spine as he could locate. "No, Pinky," he grunted, "I think _you're_ just stupid."

At that, they collapsed into a dead faint in the coal heap.

————————————————————

A long while later, Pinky awoke dizzily to the sounds of the boat docking again. Brain was still fully unconscious and didn't seem likely to wake up anytime soon, so Pinky decided to take a look around in case they were almost at Auvergne. This sounded like a very good idea, and he was very excited at the prospect of doing something constructive rather than just messing up something very important. However, he was distracted by a rumbling sound coming from above, and looking up, the little mouse saw a giant claw-like machine descending from the end of a crane down to the raw coal.

"Hmm, that's interesting. _Poit!_" Pinky noticed. Then, his survival instincts suddenly pointing out the imminent threat to his well being, Pinky let out a strangled shout and a "_Fjord!_", hurrying over to the Brain and dragging him, backpack and all, off to the furthest edge of the boat and out of the way of the claw. Just a few seconds after he had accomplished this, the claw came down and scooped up the coal from the spot where the two mice had just been laying, stretching back up to dump it somewhere else.

"_Phew!_" Pinky exhaled, wiping a bead of sweat (and quite a bit of grime) from his forehead. "That was a close one, wa'in't it, Brain?" he asked before remembering that his companion couldn't hear him. At this revelation, his ears suddenly perked up.

"He can't hear me..." he repeated slowly, liking the sound of that. So realizing, he then proceeded to make every sort of annoying noise that he could, just exactly the sorts of sounds that, if he was conscious, the Brain would have pummeled him for.

Apparently Brain had a very strong subconscious, seeing as he was still able to conk Pinky over the head even though he was still lying on the deck out cold.

Sighing again and rubbing his skull, Pinky stared up at the giant claw as it descended to grab more coal. Pinky reflected on how much the giant mechanical claw was like an arcade claw machine. He wondered if they were built the same way. Then he realized—to his own surprise as, no doubt, to any spectator's—that they had to be at least a _little_ different, because the construction claw he was watching now actually kept a grip on most of the raw coal it hauled up.

Pinky then began to wonder what Brain had meant back in chapter 1 when he'd said "A rubber band in the correct location works wonders".

The strain on Pinky's long-unused thought processors then became so great that he received a minor migraine from all of this wondering. Clutching his head meekly, Pinky lowered his eyes from the giant mechanical claw and spotted a signpost. There were a lot of French words he didn't understand, but there, right on the sign, it read "AUVERGNE".

" 'A-U-V-E-R-G-N-E'," Pinky read aloud, squinting at the letters. He then vigorously shook his head. "No no _no_, that's not _right!_ We're supposed to be in _Auvergne_, not 'Aw-vurg-nee'!" Slumping back down in the nearly-empty coal deposits, he contemplated waking Brain. "Ahhhhhhh...Ummmmmmmmm...he'd just get mad and take away my Tom Jones CDs again," Pinky decided, then yawned. "We've got to wait 'till the boat gets to Auvergne anyways. _Troz!_"

So saying, Pinky stretched and curled up in a ball, heading to sleep just as the boat left harbor to return to Paris.

————————————————————

A few hours later, the Brain came groggily to on the rocking boat—and was promptly seasick over the side. Looking around, he spotted Pinky snoring peacefully on his left. Aside from the proof of Pinky's laziness, the genius mouse perceived the fact that they were now closer to the side of the boat than when he had fainted—_and_ that the coal was gone. So realizing, the Brain then deduced that much time had elapsed since his last bout of consciousness and that they must finally be near their destination.

"Wake up, Pinky!" he ordered, nudging his companion roughly with his foot. Grasping the knapsack while Pinky blearily rubbed his eyes, Brain prepared to disembark on what he _thought_ was the coast of Auvergne.

"Are we there a'ready, Brain?" Pinky asked, not as stupidly as it would soon turn out.

Brain once more managed to avoid whacking Pinky. "Of _course_ we are," he scoffed. "We _must_ be, if I've calculated the angle of the boat, analyzed the flow of the river, interpreted the map and timed our journey correctly—_as I must have since I have such an immensely superior brain_—then this is Auvergne!" So saying, he jumped out of the boat at the first possible opportunity and dove into the current, swimming deftly to the shore with Pinky following close behind.

Allow me to digress slightly and say that the mental organ we call our minds is an amazingly interesting and complex thing. To use the current situation as an example, it is easy for a simple variable to affect the brain's performance. Overconsumption of alcohol clouds one's logic. A disorder in the metabolism can deceive the senses. Watching reruns of _The Brady Bunch_ shuts down the brain altogether. Keeping such examples in mind, it is easier to understand that while Brain was usually possessed of an internal chronometer correct to within ten seconds of any atomic clock, the fact that he had only just recovered from being beaten senseless by a crew of strong Frenchmen had affected his sense of time, meaning that he was, at the current moment in our story, running two and a half hours behind Paris time.

Of course, as he ascended sopping wet and panting for breath onto the coast, the Brain didn't realize that. Instead, he shrugged off his backpack and compulsively turned back to watch for Pinky. A stream of bubbles some feet away would seem to signify that Pinky had forgotten the knack of swimming midstroke, so, sighing, the Brain waded back for him. Dragging the gangly, tuckered-out mouse behind him, the Brain returned to the shore, deposited his companion on the stiff ground and proceeded to crank Pinky's tail like a handle until all the water he'd swallowed came back out of his mouth. Gasping and spluttering, Pinky finally came back to himself and stood up, shaking himself dry like a dog.

"Thanks, Brain," he managed to pant, hunched over and breathing rapidly to get some more oxygen into the rest of his body.

The Brain simply ignored him, pulling his map of France out of his (apparently) waterproof knapsack. "Hmmmm..." he pondered aloud, trying to discern just where in Auvergne they might be. He turned the map around at every angle, but the landmarks and coastline he could see didn't seem to match up with any of the points of Auvergne. The problem puzzled him, as his megalomaniacal tendencies refused to let him doubt for a moment that he had chosen the correct time to jump out of the boat.

"_Narf!_ Hey, Brain! Come look at this!" Pinky called from somewhere behind him. The Brain's auditory nerves, however, dismissed whatever Pinky wanted to look at as unimportant, and so while his nearly planet-sized cerebrum continued to work on the problem his mouth automatically responded.

"Not right now, Pinky!" he snapped without even looking up from the map. "Can't you see I'm doing something!"

Pinky would not be deterred. "Oh, come _on_, Brain!" he repeated jovially, ejaculating small chuckles as he went on. "This is _really funny!_"

"_Not_," Brain replied through gritted teeth, "_Right_. _Now_."

Pinky's ears drooped. "Why _not?_" he protested, tugging on the Brain's arm. "It's _really_ funny, I swear it is, I—"

At last, Brain became fully fed up. "DO YOU STILL HAVE WATER IN YOUR EARS, PINKY!" he bellowed, whirling around. "I SAID I'M—"

He stopped short abruptly as he suddenly saw what Pinky had wanted him to see: the same exact harbor they'd departed before was right next to them.

"Isn't that _funny_, Brain?" Pinky giggled. "_Fjord!_ It looks just like Paris!"

The Brain's jaw dropped, his head began to spin and he finally blacked out.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

How To Have A Mental Breakdown In Ten Easy Steps

A torrent of water liberally doused on his face rose Brain from his fainting spell. He groaned and massaged his temples, sitting upwards rather slowly. Pinky leaned over him worriedly, watching him in case he passed out again. "Are you all _right_, Brain?" he asked.

Brain groaned again and opened one eye. He spotted the Paris harbor and immediately shut it again. "Oh my aching occipital lobe," he moaned. His ego was crumbling before his very eyes. How could he, the Brain, and his superior intellect miscalculate their location? It was impossible!

In his admittedly conceited panic, Brain stared up at the sky. The sun was directly overhead, signifying quite rightly that at Paris time it was now noon. However, as was stated before, the Brain's internal chronometer was not _on_ Paris time—and now, because of his recent trauma, he was now running in synch with Tokyo.

"Even the _sky_ mocks me!" he despaired. "It _insists_ on claiming that it's noon when quite _clearly_ it is nine PM at night!"

The Brain began to have a mental breakdown, and because of his humongous mind it was quite a severe one. Watching his companion fall to his knees and roll crazily across the ground, Pinky began to get a little concerned.

"What if he goes insane?" Pinky wondered aloud. "If this fanfiction has _two_ looney characters in it, we won't have anyone to do straight lines against! Nothing will happen! No one will review and everyone will stop writing about us because it won't be any fun! We'll become the abandoned characters that nobody would ever want!" The little mouse gasped in horror as he followed this train of thought to its natural conclusion. "WE'LL BECOME THE OLSEN TWINS!"

Pinky simply could not allow this to happen. So realizing, he began to run full-tilt towards his prone friend. "I'M COMING, BRAIN! _TROZ!_"

As heroic as his intentions may have been, though, Pinky was still Pinky; therefore, in his mad dash to save the Brain, he inadvertently tripped over a blade of grass—he _was_ a mouse—and tumbled headlong into Brain. Before Hurricane Pinky could be stopped, he, Brain and Brain's backpack had rolled straight down the shore and landed with a massive splash in the water.

A few seconds passed, then both Pinky and Brain's heads broke through the surface of the water, completely and thoroughly soaked. The weight of their wet fur was so heavy, their eyes were covered completely by drooped-over forelocks. Brain lifted his out of the way and turned to face Pinky.

"Thank you, Pinky," he glowered sarcastically.

Pinky beamed proudly from beneath his mop of fur. "You're welcome, Brain. _Poit!_"

In order to better show his appreciation of his companion's heroic deed, the Brain reached out from the very depths of his heart and throttled Pinky.

So wrapped up was he in this all-consuming task that it wasn't until his now-empty backpack floated by him that the Brain remembered where they were. "My equipment!" he gasped, releasing Pinky's throat and scrabbling for the odd devices he'd brought from the lab, shoving them into his backpack as he grabbed each one. Pinky rubbed his neck gingerly and also started picking the things up from where they floated on the surface of the water. He made sure to be especially careful this time.

Finally, all of the gadgets had been rescued from the possibility of rust or other water-related damage and the two mice had returned to shore. Brain shot a brief glare at Pinky, then laid the equipment out in a patch of grass to dry. "Ignorant buffoon," he muttered. "Letting my carefully-constructed tools be exposed to water, what was he—" He suddenly stopped short as he took out the alarm clock that he'd previously programmed to awaken them when the _correct_ flight would have been over Auvergne. The numbers of the digital clock quite clearly read "12:05". Brain's eyes widened, then he looked from the clock to the sky and then down at the clock again. A missing variable in his mental equation suddenly fell into place, causing him first to laugh in triumph out and then to whack himself upside the head. Pinky looked up.

"Why'd you hit yourself, Brain?" he asked concernedly, walking over. His eyes became big. "Do you _not_ want to hit _me?_ Am I being a bad punching bag lackey?"

Brain shook his head, torn between irritation at himself for not realizing it before and feeling triumphant for having figured it out at last. "It's not _you_, Pinky, it's _me_," he began without further contemplation. "I—"

Pinky cut him off with a sudden sniffle. "That's what they _all_ say," he lamented, rubbing his nose as he turned away from the Brain. His shoulders drooped. "_Narf!_ 'It's not you, it's me.' Admit it, Brain, you have a _new_ whackable lackey. You don't want me anymore. You want to hit someone _else_. Oh, just _say_ it, Brain. I won't take it badly." Whatever his promises, though, at this point Pinky began to sob into his palms.

A little fuse ignited in Brain's mind as he gritted his teeth. He was already in a bad mood from being confronted with a mistake _he'd_ made, and he was utterly sick of Pinky cutting him off with something stupid every time throughout the story that he had an important statement to make. "WILL YOU BE QUIET AND LISTEN?" he shouted irritably, whacking Pinky a good one over the head.

Pinky stiffened as he felt the blow. First confusion, then ecstasy crossed his face as his ears perked up. "He hit me! He doesn't want a new whackable lackey after all!" he rejoiced, running around laughing like a loon. However, the force of Brain's fist on his skull again was enough to quiet him down in time for the Brain's delayed proclamation.

"You see, Pinky," he explained proudly, "my superior intellect did _not_ calculate our trajectory incorrectly; it was simply that my _data_ was wrong. When we were first attacked by those ruffians at the harbor, my internal chronometer became jostled and simply presented me with a false idea of the hour! Don't you see?"

Pinky blinked, then scratched his head. "Welllllllllllll...what's your big discovery then, Brain?" he asked.

The Brain paused. This was slower than Pinky usually was. "..._That_ was _it_, Pinky. _That_ was my important proclamation!"

His companion still seemed confused, but then something clicked in his (seldom-used) mind and he began to chuckle. "Oh, was that _all_, Brain?" he guffawed, seeming amused at what he apparently saw as the Brain's oversight. "Oh, I've known _that_ the _whole time!_"

More and more bits of Brain's vanity crumbled into dust as Pinky continued to laugh. "But...but _Pinky!_" he protested, stammering almost incoherently. "That's—how could—it's not—" Finally the sentence forced itself out indignantly. "How could you possibly have known that?"

"_Zort!_ Easy, Brain!" Pinky replied, pointing at a string of text. "I read the story as we went along!"

The concept was accepted into the Brain's frontal lobe like a turkey dinner is accepted by the National Society of Vegetarians. "_Read_...the..._story?_" he asked, rubbing the side of his head as though warming up the cells would speed his thinking process.

"Yeah! _Poit!_" Pinky was really excited now, his chuckles subsiding only a little as he went on. "Y'see, Brain, there's this website, you know, And there's this story of us on here by someone named 'The Illustrious Crackpot' that's _exactly _the_ same_ as what's happening _now!_ Isn't that _narfy?_ Oh, and just last chapter it said, ummm, _'while Brain was usually possessed of an internal chronometer correct to within ten seconds of any atomic clock, the fact that he had only just recovered from being beaten senseless by a crew of strong Frenchmen had affected his sense of time (as well as some of the calculating sectors of his mind), meaning that he was, at the current moment in our story, running two and a half hours behind Paris time'_." Pinky then giggled some more and then pointed at another string of text. "And there's me saying that again just now!"

As the gawky mouse collapsed into more laughter, Brain decided that the best idea would be to simply ignore the whole thing. For one thing, it was _completely_ impossible that any stories about _them_ could be anywhere in cyberspace, much less written by someone as dodgy-sounding as "The Illustrious Crackpot", who certainly did _not_ control their copyright. And Who could expect him to believe that something like _that_ could ever exist? It was _much_ too ridiculous.

"At any rate, Pinky," the Brain interrupted abruptly, "we now know the source of the problem—which was certainly _not_ my incredibly superior mind—so all we must do is reenact our exact steps from before with the exception of us arriving successfully in Auvergne!"

So saying, the two mice gathered up their equipment and returned to the docks, where they once again accidentally insulted a group of muscular coal-haulers, experienced a scene of extraordinary violence, were knocked out and thrown on a coal barge, stayed unconscious for the entire round trip back to Paris and returned to shore again right next to the same harbor that they'd left from.

"...Well," the Brain amended woozily, rubbing his painfully throbbing head, "perhaps we don't have to do things _exactly_ the same as before."

Once this statement had been made, they promptly fell unconscious again and didn't wake up until the next chapter.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

The Next Chapter

Being the next chapter, Pinky and the Brain awoke with a start in the same patch of grass where they'd landed before. The Brain brushed as much coal dust off of him as he could comfortably manage and stood up. Just to make a double-check of the time—his internal chronometer was now insisting that he was running on Alaska hours—he pulled out the digital clock and reassured himself that it was _not_ four-thirty AM on the next day. With a sigh of relief, he headed back towards the harbor, redirected Pinky's wandering attention from a purple female skunk back to their target craft, and waited for an opportunity. Making sure his companion held his mouth shut as they walked, the two finally made a successful sneak onto the coal barge.

Once they were on board and successfully hidden beneath the piles of raw coal, Pinky let out a large breath. "_Phew!_ That was a close one, wa'in't it, Brain?" he asked.

"Shhhh!" Brain admonished him as a burly coal-hauler walked by. They ducked further down into the coal pile as the oblivious Frenchman continued along, then popped their heads back up once he'd gone. Both mice spit out a large quantity of coal they'd accidentally swallowed, trying desperately to rub the terrible taste off of their tongues.

"Thi_th_ plot i_th_ _th_not doing much _th_for my appe_th_ite," the Brain complained irritably, holding his tongue out at arm's length in an attempt to pick every speck of coal dust off of his taste buds.

"You're ju_th_st doin' it the h_w_ard way, Br_w_ain_h_," Pinky informed him, spraying something from a human-sized bottle on his outstretched tongue. "_Th_see?" he asked, shaking the bottle vigorously. "_Th_some human _h_left thi_th_ breath fre_th_shener_h_ out! _Troz_th! Thi_th_ make_th_ it _h_much ea_th_ier!"

Leaving his tongue sticking out so the substance would dry and successfully cover up the coal taste, Pinky handed the bottle to Brain. "Here! _Th_try it!" he lisped.

Brain took the bottle, which he didn't use immediately—the mark of that rarest of beings, a logically-thinking cartoon character. He wasn't completely sure whether it was actually breath freshener, as throughout the rest of the adventure he and Pinky had had the most extraordinarily bad luck. Rolling the bottle around, Brain found a label and squinted at it. His superior intellect couldn't help him at all with language, but he was certain of the fact that he had enough common sense to realize what "_Une Bombe Insecticide_" meant.

"Pinky," he began slowly, carefully putting his own tongue back in his mouth, "that's _not_ breath freshener."

"_Poit?_" Pinky inquired, looking over Brain's shoulder at the bottle. When his eyes spotted the label and the last word in the description, he swiftly turned green, then blue, then finally went completely plaid before spitting hard in every direction and running around like a mouse who'd gotten his tail chopped off by a farmer's wife. "WAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!" he cried, finally jumping off the side of the boat and submerging his tongue into the water with a relieved sigh.

The Brain witnessed these proceedings with severe disdain. "That was an utterly pointless interlude," he commented to no one in particular.

No one in particular replied, "What do you expect at such short notice?"

The Brain resolved to ignore random disembodied voices as Pinky, gasping and wheezing, clambered back up onto the barge. While the Brain helped haul him back on board, Pinky asked him breathlessly, "Gee, Brain, d'you think we're in another one of those 'Duck Amuck' parodies that everyone keeps doing even though it's not funny anymore?"

When Pinky was safely on board, the Brain scoffed at the suggestion. "Of _course_ not, Pinky," he replied. "This is _much_ too stupid."

His companion paused for a moment, then had to agree. "Yeah. _Fjord!_"

Free from any more irrelevant catastrophes—at least for the moment—they stayed hidden on board the barge until, at last, it departed, chugging away down the river. As this was the first time he'd been conscious for the journey, Pinky was jubilant, jumping up and down on top of the coal pile as soon as they were out of sight of the harbor. "This is so much _fun!_" he cried—then he started dancing. "We made it!" he sang out happily, doing a little jig. "We _maaaaaade_ it, we _maaaaaade_ it, we _maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaade_ it!"

Brain looked up irritably from the map he'd been poring over. "Could you stop that, Pinky?" he demanded. "I'm trying to—GYAAH!"

He was interrupted roughly as Pinky grabbed his hands and hauled him on top of the pile with him, giggling. The little mouse, nearly drunk with joy, then began to twirl about, dragging his short companion along with him. "We MADE it, Brain!" he cried. "We're ON the BOAT! Hahahaha_narf!_"

"Pinky—stop—I don't—PINKY!" Brain yelled, attempting to escape Pinky's grip on his wrists. Pinky, however, didn't want to let go, whirling around in sheer ecstasy with the Brain fighting desperately to get away. At long last, Brain succeeded in wrenching himself away—but the violent movement resulted in both mice tumbling down the coal heap. With a couple of bumps and more than a few internal organs rupturing, Pinky and Brain bounced all the way down the pile and out over the rim of the boat, landing with a splash in the very wide and very wet river as the boat chugged along and disappeared around a bend. After a moment, a few bubbles surfaced from the depths somewhere in the middle.

"Pinky..." came the Brain's unmistakable voice, logged with water. "Pinky, I am going to hurt you."

Another bubble surfaced, popping with a sound very like a heavy mallet landing on something's skull.

————————————————————

Much later, the two were back at the harbor, waiting once more for the same coal barge to arrive. This time, the Brain had taken all possible precautions by taping Pinky's mouth shut and tying each of his arms and legs together. Therefore, when they attempted to sneak on the boat _again_, Pinky was forced to hop along haphazardly behind instead of simply walking.

"Quickly, Pinky!" Brain urged once he was next to the boat. He turned to his now-mute companion and waved frantically towards the rim of the barge. "Hurry! Get on!"

Pinky hopped forward, appeared to be looking at something behind the Brain, and then suddenly stiffened. Immediately following this, he began to jump up and down in place while "_Mmmmmph!_"ing frantically past the gag. Brain glared at him, tapping his foot.

"I'm losing my patience, Pinky!" he warned his companion, an edge to his voice as he pointed at the barge. "GET ON."

The lanky mouse didn't even appear to register that the Brain had spoken, jumping even quicker and thrusting his head desperately towards something behind Brain. "_MMMMMMMPH! MMMPH MMMM MMMMMGGGH!_"

The Brain curled his paws into fists and began stalking towards Pinky, having had thoroughly enough. "PINKY—" he began, but got no further as at that moment his spine was compressed rather painfully by the force of one of the burly Frenchman absently stepping on it. When the boot lifted, what had been Brain had quickly morphed into a compressed and quite surprised puddle of laboratory mouse.

"I am...in intense...pain," the puddle squeaked haltingly as the last vestiges of air was forcibly driven out of what was left of its lungs.

Pinky, at last thinking coherently, managed to wriggle out of his bonds and remove the gag, at which point he hurried over to Brain and peeled him off the docks. The Brain then popped back to his normal dimensions, albeit a bit woozily and with several ribs missing. "I _did_ try to warn you," Pinky pointed out a bit lamely.

And, as such things go, that exact moment marked the next departure of the boat from Paris.

Muttering words that should not see print in a K-rated story, the Brain shoved Pinky aside and stood up. He glared first at his companion, then at the discarded gag and twine, then at the back of the departed coal barge. Following this, he sat down again and repeatedly whacked his head against the dock.

————————————————————

Much, _much_ later, they had finally managed to board the coal barge on its last trip and were hiding placidly in the piles of coal. Pinky, by order of his superior, was sitting as still and as quietly as he could, all the while thinking up amusing combinations of things to do with a bowl of mustard, a length of metal piping and a very small goat. The Brain, in direct and _intended_ contrast, divided his time between watching their route, double-checking his map and making sure that Pinky didn't do anything excessively stupid. This last one proved somewhat harder than it might appear.

At long last, the barge chugged to a stop at the same harbor where Pinky had regained consciousness during their first trip. Having survived this far into the journey, the Brain heaved a mighty sigh of relief—and his ears perked up when he spotted a giant sign on shore.

"_TOUT DROIT: AUVERGNE_"

The Brain jumped up in an uncharacteristic show of excitement, snatching his French phrasebook out of his backpack. With trembling fingers, he rifled through the pages until he found the appropriate phrase listing. The pages appeared to be glowing with a holy light, and Brain swore that he heard a chorus of holy voices singing in the background.

Then he realized that it was only Pinky warbling "The Improbable Scheme" in a strained falsetto, but with a sharp look he made his companion shut up.

Returning to his moment of dramatic revelation, Brain traced the phrase in the guidebook with his forefinger, then traced the phrase on the sign in the air. "_Tout droit_"—straight on.

Straight on, Auvergne.

"We made it," Brain breathed, a genuine smile traveling hesitantly across his face. His eyes were ringed with massive bags and his body was still covered with countless bruises, but the realization that his quest was almost at an end was enough to soften the testimony of the hardship he'd faced for the past four chapters.

Brain paused, then mentally backpedaled for a moment. " 'For the past four chapters'?" he repeated confusedly, then shook his head irritably. "I really must stop thinking like Pinky." He snorted in derision. " 'The past four chapters'. This isn't some idiotic fan fiction."

Still, the elation of one of his plans almost being completed was enough to allow him to sit on the coal barge for a while and savor the moment. How coal smelled much less like fossilized plant material when happiness was in the air!

Pinky, meanwhile, was struggling with the functions of one of his faulty memory-retrieval units. This place seemed somehow familiar to the lanky mouse, but he couldn't tell where. Could it have been in an episode of _Clutch Cargo?_ Was it the vacation resort advertised as the winning prize on _Gyp-Parody?_ Maybe it had been on _Letterman_...

In the spirit of self-preservation, what was left of Pinky's frontal lobe gave him a quick reality check and reminded him that he had been there during their first trip on the boat. However, just as the tiny smudge of gray matter was about to reveal something even more crucial to the mouse, it spontaneously shut down on account of union hours.

Pinky blinked several times as he felt the queer sensation of his brain having turned on and then turned itself back off. He scratched his head, prodded his nose a few times and spat experimentally for good measure. He couldn't shake the feeling that he was forgetting something of dreadful importance, so important that his entire existence might depend on it. So saying, Pinky tried to concentrate on what it might be—but was very quickly distracted by the sight of an arcade across the street and forgot all about it.

"Oooooooh," he whispered, his eyes glazing over as he watched the flashing lights through the window. He wondered if they had Pac-man in France. Maybe he could convince Brain to let him try Sonic once they'd found the Pink Porcupine—OOH! Or the claw machine!

He was salivating over the thought of a claw machine when a rumbling noise from above distracted him. The Brain was still lost in thought as Pinky looked up curiously and remembered what it was he'd forgotten.

"Hey, look, Brain!" he cried excitedly. "It's the giant claw machine!"

Snapping out of his reverie, Brain looked over at his companion. "What are you _talking_ about, Pinky?" he demanded, but at that moment a gargantuan shadow had passed over the coal heap. Brain stared upwards for a moment before his internal processors registered what was going on.

"GAAAAAAH!" he yelled, trying to scramble for cover. But it was much too late by now. The mechanical claw plunged downwards and scooped up the very mound of coal upon which Pinky and the Brain were seated. Closing its salvage up tight, the claw encompassed them in darkness and began to rise.

"Oh dear," Pinky said from somewhere inside the grip of the ascending claw. "This sounds like exactly the sort of cliffhanger people end chapters with."

The Brain grunted. "What are you talking about, Pinky? _No one_ ends chapters with these sorts of cliffhangers!"

A deep astral voice paused at the keyboard and remarked sardonically, "Wanna bet?"


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

Coal Processing Plants Are A Lot More Fun Than A Chuck E. Cheese's

Pinky giggled somewhat nervously, his blue eyes showing plainly in the pitch black of the inside of the claw's grip. "WOOOooooOOOOOH!" he chanted in a voice too goofy to be at all eerie. "The claw is our master! We have been chosen! _Poit! Troz! Zort! Narf! Fjord!_"

The Brain muttered angrily under his breath, and Pinky could clearly hear his companion's jagged tail thumping annoyedly against the metal of their unintentional cage. Visually, his presence was only noticeable by the glow of his bloodshot pink eyes. Pinky stared at the pink orbs of light for a minute, then spoke again.

"Hey Brain, how come I c'n see your eyes even though it's all dark?" he asked.

The Brain's eyes rolled, and the tail-thumping sound grew louder. "Pinky, we're genetically enhanced lab mice. You'd think one of the _obvious_ side effects would be our eyes glowing in the dark."

Pinky ruminated over this for a moment. "Oh," he realized, then lapsed into silence once more.

The claw then decided at that moment to make a sharp heave towards the left—or at least, what the Brain could only assume was the left—and the two tumbled against each other while some of the smaller coal particles leaked out through the gaps between the claw's teeth. Pulling himself out from under Pinky, Brain inched towards one of the gaps and squinted into the tiny patch of light. Maybe they could—

The sight of the sickeningly long distance between the claw and the ground made Brain quickly change his mind.

Finally, after what seemed like an incredibly long time, the rumbling came to a halt and the claw stopped with it, swaying only slightly but enough to make two small mice feel very airsick. The claw opened a fraction wider and some more coal slipped out. Brain's eyes bobbed about in the darkness a bit until they found Pinky's. Then, feeling that the moment of judgment had come, Brain clutched Pinky's arm.

"Pinky," he began strainedly, trying to find the words, "I...I have never tolerated you more than at this very moment."

His companion let out a wail and squeezed Brain in a massive bear hug. "Oh, Brain," he bawled, "I tolerate you too!"

And with that, the giant claw opened and the jumbled heap of mice and coal was sent spiraling down into the depths of a coal processing plant.

Brain landed with a heavy, thudding splash in the water and thought he was dead. This feeling passed, however, when he realized that those who are dead do not feel the imminent threat of drowning, which he at that moment was experiencing. Flailing his arms desperately to keep his considerably-sized head above the water, Brain gasped and looked panickedly around him for Pinky. Finally spotting his companion floating tail-side up some feet to the right, Brain struggled to combat the artificial current as he swam desperately in Pinky's direction.

With his superior frontal lobe, the Brain was well-informed on the subject of the preparation of raw coal; however, the process is not common knowledge, so therefore I shall elaborate. What he and Pinky were now trapped in was something like a gigantic metal upside-down cone with a current of water being pumped upwards from the bottom. A sheet of sand covered the surface of the water, which is what Pinky was laying groggily on when the Brain finally reached him. The purpose of the sand was that all of the pure coal would float on top of it, whereas the heavier, impure compounds of coal, or middlings, would sink to a lower level to be sifted through later. Knowing this, it was on top of one of these pure coal fragments that the Brain climbed, using his paws as makeshift paddles to reach his stunned companion.

"Pinky!" he called over the roar of the water, hauling the mouse up by his armpits. Pinky's eyes were unfocused and his frame limp. Brain began to panic. "SAY something, Pinky!" he demanded as what he knew of Pinky's life suddenly flashed before his eyes. "Say SOMETHING! _ANYTHING!_"

The lanky mouse coughed slightly, then croaked, "Are you pondering what I'm pondering, Brain?"

He was unable to answer, as at that moment the current whisked them out of the water-filled room and into the chute for the clean coal. Although not a particularly religious mouse, the Brain uttered a small string of prayers as Pinky did the same. When he'd finished, Pinky heaved a sigh and turned to Brain. "Do you think there's a higher being, Brain?" he asked shakily, still attempting to regather his nerves. "Like a god?"

The Brain answered with his normal condescension, but kept an eye out in case of any stray lightning bolts his way. "If there is, I hope they're nothing like your 'Illustrious Crackpot'."

For a moment, let me digress and tell you about Maurice the coal guy. (No, this is not simply because of the Brain's sarcastic remark, I am a very well-rounded person and do not need the approval of one whom I am torturing to further myself in life. For obvious reasons.) ANYWAYS, Maurice was an older man, a bit heavyset, and had the unenviable job of staring at the camera monitors in the L'Acme Coal Processing Plant. Exciting life, that. He sighed ruefully and took a swig from a water bottle close to hand. Maurice had a somewhat normal voice, but what he _really_ liked to do was impressions. He could sit next to a man at dinner and, by the end of the meal, be able to exactly mimic his voice. He'd done the Goodfellows, he'd done Orson Welles, he'd even done the Tasmanian Devil on a particularly slow night. Maurice would have quickly gone into voice acting, but his friends had insisted that there was no future in it and instead signed him up for a job at L'Acme. It was the worst thing that had ever happened to Maurice, and he complained about it frequently. Who was going to care about what happened on the monitors? It was just a bunch of black rocks going down a chute, after all. Plus, the management had slashed his paycheck the last time he'd tried to watch some good wholesome TV instead.

With a groan, Maurice settled back in his chair for another agonizing night. It wasn't even eight o'clock, but it was already beginning to drag. He wished he could have called his friend Rob, the moron who'd given him this job in the first place. That would have at least passed the time quicker. The management banned using their own phones, but if Maurice could sneak out his own cell phone and set it on text, placing it beneath the viewpoint of the security camera...

He glanced about apprehensively, then leaned towards the monitor to casually slip the pocket phone out of his jacket—but then he stopped as he caught sight of something happening in one of the chutes. Maurice bolted back upright in his seat and stared at it again. He was sure of it. In a shocked panic, Maurice slammed his fist on the intercom button at his desk and barked into it in French.

"Mon Dieu_, stop the machine! There are two mice in there!_"

An alarm blared short and fast, and all the men on duty turned off their pressure valves and completely stopped the machine. All of the pure coal that had been waiting to float into the chute sank to the bottom of the funnel, along with assorted middlings. But not many of the workers cared as they rushed over to free the two captive creatures. Not out of compassion, you should know, but because of the possible union regulations this impediment could allow them to cash in on.

As excited French hands lifted Pinky and the Brain out of the coal chute, Pinky turned to his companion. "What an incredible coincidence!" he remarked. "_Zort!_"

Brain's eyes narrowed. "Yes...an incredible coincidence..." he mused irritably. "There seem to be _quite_ a lot of them since we arrived in France..." Perhaps the silly "fanfiction" idea Pinky had wasn't quite so illogical after all. Indeed, these sorts of things seemed to happen annoyingly often when amateur authors ran out of ideas.

As for Maurice the coal guy, Pinky and the Brain's unknowing savior, he was simply exasperated that the battery on his cell phone had just died.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

Is Pretty Long. Sorry.

After a quick consultation with the Animal Rights Activist section of the workforce, the coal processing workers dropped the two mice out in the rolling fields of Auvergne—yet another unbelievable coincidence, and Pinky said so.

"So!" Pinky said, taking the above paragraph a bit too literally. Then he rubbed his neck. "Why d'you suppose that last chapter was so short and meaningless, Brain?"

Brain had finally caved in on Pinky's theory, seeing the overwhelming plot-related evidence in its favor. "It looks as though the coal processing plant was supposed to be the climax of the story," he scoffed, rubbing grass and coal stains out of his fur. "However, it has appeared that there wasn't quite enough material to make for an exciting climax, so we were randomly deposited here in preparation for the end."

Pinky ruminated on this for a moment, then nodded. "Plus, the story's gettin' a bit too long anyway."

A triumphant glow lit up the Brain's eyes. "But it's almost over, for soon I shall rule the world!" he proclaimed, then scampered over a grassy ridge. The sky had darkened with the evening, so Brain dug a small flashlight out of his somehow-intact knapsack and turned it on. Directly below them was what looked like a nineteenth-century horse and cart without the horse...as one would hope. The paint was peeling and the wood was quite old, but it was unquestionably the historically-preserved carriage of Inspector Jacques Mousseau.

Pinky was the first to speak, doing so with a yelp as he leapt into the air. "WEEEEEEEE _DID IT!_" he cried, then realized that he had jumped into the air above the carriage and that therefore he was plummeting down towards it.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH_OOF!_"

Brain regarded with disdain Pinky's struggling back legs sticking out of the top of the carriage. "Pinky, I would appreciate that you not destroy the carriage yet," he sighed, descending to the roof of the rotten old carriage and pulling his companion out of the wood. "Besides," he continued as Pinky dug some splinters out of his ears, "finding the carriage was only the first part. Finding the Pink Porcupine Diamond is the second."

The Brain flipped open his knapsack again and grabbed a small contraption that looked like a fishing pole without the pole—basically, just the hook and line with the reel attached at the end that looked suspiciously like the grappling hook from the first chapter. Placing the hook in a sturdy cleft of the above hillside, Brain took hold of the reel and jumped off the top of the carriage, descending gracefully with the slowly-unraveling line until he'd reached the ground. Pinky climbed monkeylike down the string after him, only stumbling once or twice.

"Ummmmm, well, I forgot to ask earlier, Brain," Pinky began as he touched down on solid earth, "but how come you think the diamond is going to be in the carriage?"

Reeling the hook back in, the Brain snorted derisively. "The criminals who'd attacked Mousseau couldn't possibly have sold the diamond before being caught by the police, as they would not have had the time to do so, and the diamond wasn't found on them. Mousseau's amnesia would have prevented him from retrieving the diamond from its hiding spot after he'd come to, and not even _he_ would have been stupid enough to keep the diamond on his person."

"_Zort! _But you said they'd _searched_ the carriage!" Pinky protested, showing an unusual amount of intelligence. This image was soon dissipated, however, as he grabbed two blades of grass and began mock-swordfighting with them.

"Yes, I did." Even though it had not lasted long, Brain had been somewhat impressed with Pinky's random recollection of memory. "However, they are _humans_. They could not search the smaller places that we _mice_ can get to easily."

Brain was about to embark on another self-important monologue, but was interrupted by a gigantic rumbling sound. He glanced about panickedly, scanning the skies for signs of thunderclouds. There were none in sight, but the rumbling kept going for a full three minutes. By then, Brain had flung himself to the ground and covered his head with his arms. At last the rumbling passed, and Brain pushed himself up to his elbows.

"What was THAT?" he demanded.

Pinky grinned apologetically and rubbed his stomach. "Sorry, Brain. I'm really hungry."

The Brain raised an irritated eyebrow at the author for having used such a stupid and overworked gag.

"Well, Brain, I mean," Pinky continued, wandering over towards Brain, "I haven't had anything to eat since chapter three, and _that_ was a long time ago!"

Brain decided not to point out the fact that he himself had been starving since the morning's food pellets at the lab, seeing as he was still in what he considered to be the land of nauseating food. In his case, though, egotism and mental control had allowed him to conceal the noises of stomach rumblings except under the most extreme of pressures. "I'm sorry, Pinky," he apologized gruffly yet at least a little sincerely, "but you can't eat anything until we've finished with the carriage. I am _not_ about to go through all of that tedious torture _again_ just because you feel peckish."

The Brain scrabbled onto the single remaining back wheel of the carriage and up into the rotted-open back, causing the boards to creak ominously. Pinky followed close behind, stumbling a bit on the ledge. "_Narf!_" he exhaled as he slammed face-down on the floor of the carriage, proceeding to make the framework of the entire carriage wobble. The movement dislodged a small ceramic pot from a rotted overhead shelf, which promptly bounced off of the both Pinky's and Brain's respective heads and shattered on the floor. A pungent and thoroughly repulsive odor leaked out of the chipped urn as a liquidy glop the color of vomit congealed on the floorboards, actually burning a small hole through it. Pinky clapped his hands around his nose, but the Brain's eyes were tearing and he was practically on the verge of swooning.

"_What_ is _that?_" Pinky coughed, stooping over to examine it. The Brain leaned against the side of the carriage for support, grasping his gut.

"Mousseau...was fond of an..._incredibly_ repugnant...form of escargot," the Brain gasped. His normally pure white fur, beneath its coating of coal, sand and travel-sweat, was beginning to turn green from the fumes. "He was...carrying it...in the carriage...to eat when he...returned home." He paused to wheeze violently. "As can be surmised...no one was...brave enough to remove...any of it after the...carriage was discovered."

"Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm_oh_," Pinky replied cryptically, creeping cautiously over to the glop. Bending over carefully, he scraped some of it onto his finger—ignoring the sensation of the corrosive material eating through his flesh—and sampled it with a quick lick. The Brain immediately turned blue and had to cover his mouth to hold back the contents of his stomach. Pinky mused over the taste for a moment, then began shoveling even more into his mouth. "This is _great_, Brain!" he proclaimed through massive mouthfuls of the stuff. He held out a gooey handful to the Brain. "Want some?"

There was nothing else for it—the Brain got sick over the edge of the carriage. (And with some pretty wild sound effects, I might add.)

"Pinky," he wheezed, not facing his companion, "please remove that vile substance from my sight."

Pinky looked from the centuries-old escargot to the Brain, then back again. "You really should acquire a taste for foreign food, Brain," he informed him, but nevertheless he disposed of the escargot through the trash receptacle he fondly called his mouth. He burped, then waved at Brain. "It's gone now, Brain!"

Just to be on the safe side, Brain waited a few more moments before turning around to look into the carriage again. What he saw was absolutely incredible. This was obviously where Mousseau had kept the criminals on his fateful journey across the plains, as there were the remains of old handcuffs and other restraining devices scattered across the floor. A solitary padlock rested against the back wall, rusting and decrepit. There was a window communicating between this section of the carriage and the "driver's seat", one with bars across it, and scrawled across the wall next to it were various old, rude French missives carved into the wood in nearly illegible text. There was also another "section" of the carriage, a half-room that looked like there _used_ to be a divide between it and the chamber they were in currently. This was apparently where Mousseau had kept his necessary tools, out of reach from his criminal passengers but not up front where they could be lost by a sudden bump in the road. This was also where the escargot had fallen from, as the shelf had in the hijacking presumably been knocked haphazardly through the long-rotted wall and was settled at an odd angle over the room they were in now. The Brain sighed. The romantic in him might have liked to sit there quietly for a while, simply taking in the influence of cultures long past—but his business side sharply told the romantic to shut up, as there was work to be done and a diamond to be found.

Without any further opportunities for his whimsical side to say something hopelessly inspiring, the Brain opened his backpack and removed what looked quite a bit like a small magnet with a belt and a few switches attached. When Brain pulled the device out, Pinky's eyes lit up and he began to applaud.

"E-_gad!_" he cried, jumping up and down. "You've _really_ done it, Brain! You've found a magnet that attracts diamonds to it!" Pinky made several nasally noises in his glee. "Oh, this is just like on _The Tick!_" he announced—but then paused in confusion. "Or did that one attract fish?"

The Brain glared witheringly at him, an effect that was more unnerving than usual since he still had unusually massive bags beneath his eyes. "Try to _think_, Pinky," he suggested tartly, buckling the belt around his waist. "It might prove beneficial."

So saying, he repositioned the magnet so the poles were pointed towards the ceiling, then flipped on a few of the switches clipped to the belt. Within a moment, the electrically-amplified magnetic current had pulled the magnet up to the metal reinforcers in the roof of the carriage, tugging the Brain up along after it. His point fully made, he crossed his arms and looked down at Pinky.

"Well, Pinky?" he called down, seeing as he was quite a ways up from the gawky mouse. "It's simply a normal magnet with an incredibly large range! This way, I can hang from the ceiling and have a unique vantage point that might allow me to view the diamond!"

"Haha! _Fjord!_" Pinky called back in awe, chuckling a little at the sight of Brain suspended from the ceiling by a magnet. That would be one to tell the guys at his weekly "Fifty-Two Pickup" game. Actually, "the guys" were just some old napkins and a moldy cheese crumb he'd found in the lab kitchen, but he didn't tell them that in case it hurt their feelings. Pinky was thinking all this rather merrily, having a pretty good time, then suddenly he paused mid-laugh as he looked back up at the Brain on the ceiling. "Wait a minute, no no _no!_" he realized, then cupped his hands around his mouth as he shouted up to his companion. "But Brain, if that's such a strong magnet, wouldn't it attract more of the metal stuff in the room than just—"

At that moment Pinky was interrupted by a large _clash_ as physics was reminded of its minor error and summoned everything metal in the entire carriage to the Brain's skull. And although Brain's skull had gradually become very strong to protect the brilliant mind inside, it's a bit hard to ignore the sensation of being attacked by a series of wrenches, several pairs of old rusted handcuffs, the metal bars in the window, a small unlit gas lamp, the rusted padlock that had been in the corner and a lot of the bolts in the roof reinforcers, not to mention numerous other equally painful things that I've momentarily forgotten but may suddenly recall twenty years from now. A strangled, sarcastic moan escaped from beneath the wreckage.

"Thank you, Pinky."

Pinky beamed and stood straight up, saluting at the pile of metal implements stuck to the ceiling. "You're welcome, Brain! _Narf!_" He grinned. "It was nothing, really, I mean, there're already so many fanfictions that just forget that sort of stuff."

Somehow an arm reached out from within the pile on the ceiling and flicked the switch again. The magnet was turned off, and as one the attracted items, the magnet and the mouse belted to it fell to the floor. Most of the debris crashed perilously close to where Pinky was standing, but in the interest of keeping queasy readers from having fatal attacks of stress, I hasten to add that the little mouse was able to avoid most injury except for the problem of sustaining a bruise to the upper arm. (It's perfectly safe for me to tell you this, as it has no bearing on the story whatsoever.) As for the Brain, he was able to open his backpack in mid-fall and pull out a handkerchief, opening it for easy descent—

—about a second after he hit the floor.

Pinky ambled over to the Brain and removed the handkerchief from the air, blowing his nose on it and handing it back to his prone companion. With a heady grunt that may well have been a sigh, Brain peeled himself back off the floor and removed the magnet from the U-shaped dent it had made in his back. He glared accusingly at the magnet, as though the sudden reinstatement of the laws of physics had been its fault, then disgustedly unfastened the belt and heaved the contraption carelessly into a corner. Not so carelessly, however, that it didn't land on something soft.

"Perhaps this should be attempted _again_," the Brain grumbled, rummaging about in his backpack again. This time he came up with what looked like television anttenae attached to a digital clock with a lot of spare wires scattered around the frame and what appeared to be parts of a metal detector and—Pinky was afraid to ask whether or not one of the pieces had come off of a Thighmaster.

"What's that, Brain?" Pinky asked curiously, prodding the antenna. There was a large _ZZZZZZZAT!_, and the small mouse was then quite surprised to be suddenly conducting over twenty thousand volts of electricity through his body, which he was _also_ surprised to find lighting up and portraying his skeletal system through his skin. After about half a minute of this, the current was broken by a small jolt and Pinky collapsed, smoking, to the floor, whereupon the contraption promptly exploded.

"That _was_," Brain replied a moment later, looking down at his soot-soaked, scorched hands and the twisted black wreckage in them, "a revolutionary new device I had invented that could detect the invisible wavelengths of minerals, which had taken me months to design and which I had just last night programmed to the smallest detail to pick up the waves of carbonic crystals, of which diamonds are made."

There was a long pause following this.

"I hope you went to the patent office with it already, Brain," Pinky commented somewhat weakly from the floor.

The Brain remained silent a while longer in mourning of the passage of an incredibly sophisticated machine, then with an almost heart-shattering sigh placed it reverentially on the floor and turned back to his knapsack. Within another moment, he had produced something that looked very much like a universal TV remote with a vacuum bag, satellite dish and Ronco food dehydrator attached to it. While Pinky strained to get up from the floor, the Brain adjusted several bizarre-looking settings on the remote and then gripped a hole in the floor with his jagged tail. "Hold on to something solid, Pinky!" he ordered, then as Pinky dug his fingernails into the floor, Brain pressed the "Cable" button.

Immediately the Ronco whirred like mad and everything in the carriage was lifted off the ground, floating lazily in midair while the vacuum bag inflated almost to breaking point. The Brain's tail strained and clenched, but it succeeded in holding him mostly on the ground. Pinky, however, had always been imbued with a somewhat poor grip and was soon sailing about in midair with the rest of the items in the carriage. His eyes were squeezed shut for fear of catastrophe, but once he'd opened his eyes and realized his predicament the little mouse began to enjoy himself, doing a quick backstroke, a midair somersault, a few bars of the Macarena and a quick weightless rendition of "Swan Lake".

"_Zort!_" Pinky observed, turning upside down beneath a floating pair of handcuffs. He looked down at the Brain as he continued to make slow, semi-graceful flips. "What's this, Brain?"

The Brain was tremendously proud of this invention, and this pride was clearly etched in every line of his triumphant grin. "An anti-gravity field, Pinky!" he proclaimed impressively, easing his tail's hold on the floor and floating gently upwards. He patted his contraption with the same air as a man rewarding his favorite son. "It took an incredible amount of work to create this at the lab without those scientists noticing the necessary components missing, but after all this long time I have finally made it!"

Brain had wanted to hype this device for quite some time, so he just kept going with it although Pinky was clearly paying more attention to the steps of a levitational polka. "The principle it works upon, you realize, is that a remote control can send commands virtually through empty air to a receiving area. With a few molecular adjustments, the remote could act as a transmitter to _any_ sort of atom in existence. As well, the addition of the satellite dish would increase the range of the device, meaning that the orders given would be received by all nearby atoms and not merely the ones that the remote is directed towards."

While the Brain's back was turned, Pinky stifled a small yawn, instead focusing on moving in interesting and inventive ways through the empty air. The Brain continued regardless. "And that is where the food dehydrator comes in. In order to lessen the air pressure bearing down on the objects in question, some components of a Ronco were required...although not to remove liquids, but to remove an atmospheric gas! But as matter cannot be created or destroyed, the air is instead temporarily redirected to another location—_the vacuum bag_." The Brain laughed in an intellectual manner. "It sounds like a foolishly simple concept, but it actually required an incredibly long time for the idea to come into my superior mind and longer to build and perfect this machine! And now, with its advent, we shall be able to search the entire carriage without having to move any heavy objects of any sort!"

Sensing that Brain's speech was over, Pinky applauded vigorously to convey the impression that he had been listening appreciatively the entire time. Brain wasn't fooled, but welcomed the applause with forced modesty. "And the most vital component," he added self-importantly, "is that any slight changes in atmospheric pressure will have no effect on the field, as the dehydrator is programmed to regulate itself according to various environmental conditions." The promotion of his invention finally at an end, Brain proceeded to get down to business. "Now, Pinky, let's find that diamond!"

Regretfully abandoning his attempt at tapping out "La Cucaracha" in midair, Pinky floated over to another section of the room and began to look around. The Brain waited a moment to make sure all would go well and that this invention wouldn't also prove faulty, then made his way to the opposite end of the room.

Unfortunately, at that moment a strong gust of wind outside blew a large and very old tree down on the ridge above the carriage. Although the obvious catastrophe of it landing on the carriage never came to pass, it _did_ however manage to convince Brain's anti-gravity conductor that a very large amount of air pressure had just descended upon the carriage. So with a sudden jolt, the dehydrator sucked up even more air to (it thought) balance out the atmosphere, and with no one to witness it but a solitary cow out for a last graze, the entire wreckage of Mousseau's coach suffered a tremendous loss of gravity and shot up into the air.

A foreboding rumble alerted the danger sections in the Brain's, well, brain, and he decided to look up. Not much appeared amiss, however, so Brain ignored it. Pinky, on the other hand, had happened to be floating in the direction of the back door and chanced to see the plains of Auvergne a worrying distance down from them.

"Nice view! _Troz!_" Pinky remarked before drifting away again—then he paused in midair. He looked again. The ground definitely _was_ a little farther away than he would have liked.

"Ummmm...Brain?" he began hesitantly, attempting to make his way over to his companion. However, it was hard to deliberately move in a single direction, so he was forced to call to Brain instead of tapping him on the shoulder. "Braaaaaaaa-aaaaaaain!"

The Brain's head shot up from inside a tool kit he'd found. "What is it?" he demanded eagerly. "Did you find the diamond?"

"Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnno, not as _such_," Pinky was forced to admit, then began gesticulating wildly. "But the—"

He was cut off by the Brain, who was fed up with what he only saw as Pinky's latest pointless distraction. "If you have not found the diamond, then I do not desire to hear it, Pinky!" he snapped, diving back into the toolbox. A wayward wrench happened to sail towards Pinky, but because of the lower gravity it became suspended in midair rather than dealing any sort of damage. Pinky worried, twisting his tail nervously in his hands, then spotted the anti-gravity projector. The vacuum bag was unbelievably full now, and some of the seams were actually popping as even more air pressure was relocated from the interior and exterior of the carriage.

"Braaaaaaaaaiiin..." Pinky began again, and was once more rudely interrupted.

"Pinky, what did I _tell_ you?" Brain shot back, a hard edge in his voice as he ducked his head back down into the bin.

His fur on end and small teeth chattering, Pinky glanced wildly between the ground rapidly receding behind them and the vacuum bag expanding further and further. What to do, what to do, what to do...The little mouse was about to take matters into his own hands when he spotted Elvis, Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster in a plane with Amelia Earhart, dragging in the jetstream behind them a coffin plainly labeled "Jimmy Hoffa".

"BRAIN!" Pinky gasped, pointing at the incredible spectacle. "BRAIN, OH, OH OH, OH LOOK OH LOOK OH LOOOOOOK! _NARF!_"

This time the Brain didn't even grant Pinky the satisfaction of looking up. "I'm sure it's utterly insignificant, like your _mind!_" he shouted irritably. "Now look for that diamond or I shall have to hurt you!"

Pinky whimpered and covered his head, his large ears flattening against his skull. The ground got further away, the vacuum bag continued to inflate past its capacity, the last clue to the major unsolved mysteries retreated into the distance and the escargot Pinky had had was deciding that it might want to make a return visit.

In a split second the vacuum bag popped, and the historically-preserved carriage with its sudden new influx of gravity began to make a screaming reentry into the earth's atmosphere.

_KRA-BOOOOOOM!_

That night the Parisians, looking out of their windows, viewed a spectacular explosion from somewhere to their south and wondered if those pesky Spaniards would stop celebrating their national holidays when decent people were trying to get a bit of sleep.

The carriage was utterly destroyed. The entire roof had caved in, all of the previously floating implements were piled in unnatural positions on top of each other and the carriage's last remaining back wheel had actually managed to go into orbit around the earth and would, in twenty years' time, make a somewhat disastrous impact with an alien space probe, causing a huge and terrible interplanetary war. But that's all in the future. And hopefully we should all be slightly more concerned that at the bottom of the rubble were two very small, genetically-altered lab mice.

Groaning and rubbing his cranium, the Brain heaved himself out from under a collapsed metal roof reinforcer and rooted tensely around in the debris for Pinky. He found the gawky mouse twittering like a bird with an empty gas lamp on his head. With a grunt, Brain managed to pull the lantern off of his companion, then leaving his Pinky to regain quasi-sensibility went with a pounding heart to check the anti-gravitational projector. It had been utterly destroyed, buried beneath a shelf full of eleven ceramic jars of escargot.

"NOOOOO!" Brain howled when he spotted the wreckage of his most prized invention. He ran over to the still form of the machine, the vacuum bag punctured with massive holes, the universal remote no longer quite so universal, and the Ronco far beyond being resalable at a flea market. "It's—it's all right," Brain whimpered, patting the machine. "You had a good life, and you...you served me very well. I'm very proud of you. But...you'll be going somewhere better now."

Pinky sat up abruptly. "Really, Brain?" he interrupted. "I always _wanted_ to go to Memphis!"

Brain sighed and slumped over in defeat. "We're not going _anywhere_, Pinky," he moaned. "It's over. We're _finished_. Nothing matters anymore."

Confused beyond measure, Pinky walked over to his companion. "What do you mean, Brain?" he asked. His ears drooped slightly at the tips, and he took on a concerned expression. "It's not _all_ over," he tried to console the Brain. "We c'n still find the diamond, can't we?"

"No, Pinky," Brain replied brokenly. He turned to face Pinky, his face lined with utter downfall. "That was the last piece of equipment I had that could have helped us find it. The only other things in my pack were fake IDs in case we were caught, that French phrasebook and a copy of _The Origin of Species_ for light reading on the plane!" The Brain then swept a dejected hand over the entire scene about them. "We can't search _this_ ourselves. We're too small to move most of the wreckage, and if we involved humans, they'd take the diamond for themselves. We can't win...We simply _can't win_." Completely crushed, Brain took a seat on the grassy knoll and stared emptily into space.

The situation was frightful to Pinky. Barring his mental breakdown in chapter 5, the Brain had never seemed quite so desolate. The tall mouse reached out a hand to comfort his companion—but then his stomach rumbled. Pinky cranked out a queasy smile.

"Um, Brain? As...as long as we're not going anywhere, wellllll...can I eat some of that escargot?"

He decided worriedly to take the Brain's utter silence as a "yes" and grabbed one of the small ceramic pots. Heaving it off of the collapsed shelf, Pinky eased the lid open and began messily—but quietly, out of respect to his companion—to devour the contents. Soon enough that jar was empty, but Pinky's stomach wasn't and he cracked open another one. Momentarily he considered offering some to Brain, but decided that that might not be the best move at the current time. So instead he finished off that jar as well, and had just opened another one when something made him stop. Pinky stared, his eyes widening. He rubbed them vigorously, blinking several times. He attempted to say something, but no sound came out no matter how hard he tried. Shaking like a leaf with his knees knocking, Pinky reached behind him and tapped the Brain's shoulder. Brain sighed heavily.

"It's useless, Pinky," he lamented, turning away. "We never should have come here at all. Nothing is worth it."

Pinky quivered even more, his vision spinning. He tapped the Brain's shoulder again, harder and more insistently this time. "Ahwahl—glibblerug—trozzicius—spizzerinctum—" he babbled incoherently. Once more, Brain waved him off.

"It couldn't have worked," Brain went on. "It never would have worked. We were fools to think we could succeed where men and a century of decomposition have failed. The plan was flawed from the beginning. The trip was unnecessary. The pain and torture was unnecessary. Having to enact an amateur writer's whims was _completely_ unnecessary." If that was possible, he slumped even further over. "Perhaps we should simply return to the lab."

It was at this point that Pinky simply had to take charge himself, which he did by bodily lifting Brain up and plopping him down again in front of the escargot jar. The Brain gazed dejectedly at the bile-colored glop—then his heart stopped as a stray beam of moonlight glinted off of something inside the jar. With trembling hands, the mouse reached into the depths of the corrosive food and found something unexpectedly hard, something larger even than his own head.

Lifting it slowly out, the Brain became aware of the sensation that after over one hundred years, he was the first to touch the legendary Pink Porcupine Diamond.

"Mousseau wasn't quite as stupid as he had seemed," the Brain exhaled breathlessly in a voice no louder than a whisper. The diamond, with the moonlight playing through it, was indeed a beautiful iridescent rose with the aforementioned porcupine-shaped flaw in the center. Both mice were completely enraptured. "He knew the criminals he was conveying would try to steal the diamond, so he placed it inside one of the jars of his repugnant escargot. Not even an honest man would want to open one of those, unless it was Mousseau himself."

The silence lasted a bit longer until Brain broke it again, turning to Pinky. "Pinky," he stated unbelievingly, "the world is _ours_."


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

The Last Chapter, I PROMISE! (Except for a little section at the end.)

The next morning, both Pinky and Brain were back in Acme Labs. In an outcome so perfect even the Brain couldn't have planned it that way, the scientists at the lab had been so engrossed by _Mitochondria in Action_ that they had all spontaneously quit in order to make the lecture circuit with it. And since the government wouldn't be able to supply more scientists to the facility until the next day, the lab mice had more than ample time to prepare for their long-awaited takeover of the world. (There was talk of a character called "Mandark" buying out the facility to repair and improve his _own_ lab, but apparently it was an unfounded rumor started by a jealous cartoon company.)

To return to the point, Brain was pacing up and down the desk their cage sat on, every so often darting glances at the Pink Porcupine ensconced in tissue paper on the bookshelf. He was still trying to puzzle out how best to advertise his claw machine and the diamond, as it was vitally important that everyone on the planet used up all of their currency on the first day. After that, they would logically go back to their respective mints and print up some more, but as long as he and Pinky could manage to capture those mints before that, they would be in control of all the money in the world by that night, thereby _taking over the world!_ The very prospect made Brain shiver.

But then he realized that he was actually shivering because Pinky was playing with the air conditioner again.

"Pinky!" he barked, and the gawky mouse zoomed right over, his arm snapping into a salute.

"Right-o, Brain! _Troz!_"

Brain resumed pacing as Pinky stood to attention. "This is one of the most crucial moments of the plan," he informed Pinky. "All must be ready by this afternoon for the takeover to be successful. I shall begin advertising through major websites across the planet, after which I shall pirate the satellites and broadcast my message on international television." He pointed to Pinky. "Pinky, you shall be in charge of putting the diamond into the claw machine. Also, I'm going to need you to count out one billion packing peanuts and place them in the machine as well, though keeping the diamond clearly visible." Brain then paused to think for a moment. "The location of the machine..." he pondered aloud. "The lab is too small for the population of the world to fit into, so...perhaps if...theoretically..." He ran a series of complicated calculations through his head. Apparently coming to a decision, he turned back to Pinky. "After all that, I'll need you to borrow my mechanical suit and convey the claw machine to Forbes Hall. Do you believe you can handle that without messing up?"

Pinky counted on his fingers as he repeated the information. "Ummm, diamond, claw machine, packing peanuts, suit, Forbes." He gave his superior an emphatic thumbs-up. "You can count on me, Brain!" Pinky reassured him with a "_Zort!_". He was spasmodic with excitement. Not only were they going to finally take over the world, Brain was _actually letting him use THE SUIT!_ Pinky _never_ got to use the suit, and it was always so much _fun_ to get into the giant, human-shaped mechanical shell and have people think that you were just a broad-shouldered, formally-dressed man with a small, furry head.

"Good," Brain replied. He was a bit uneasy about giving Pinky that much responsibility, but hacking into prominent and presumably well-protected websites and TV stations would take him the entire morning and he needed absolutely _everything_ done before the afternoon came about. So encouraging himself, he hurried off to the lab's main computer terminal and started work. A small part of him wished that he had had more time so he could have also inserted ads in newspapers, magazines and skywriting for those smaller countries that didn't have computers or TVs, but he consoled himself with the fact that societies who couldn't buy such items also wouldn't have any money to spend on the claw machine.

Pinky, meanwhile, was very cautiously lugging the Pink Porcupine over to the claw machine, pausing occasionally for breath—even he, a tall mouse for his age, only barely topped the diamond in height. With a heavy pant, Pinky finally deposited the treasure at the base of the machine, then leaving the diamond on the floor, he began to climb up to the glass panel beyond which still lay the random knickknacks Brain had filled it with the day before. Pinky stared at them for a while, then desire temporarily overwhelmed him and he scrambled down to the coin slot with a quarter. After they'd returned to Burbank the night before, Brain had immediately started work on converting the machine's slot into a universal coin size, but seeing as that would make it easier for people to insert non-monetary items, he'd compromised by converting the entire front of the machine into a series of coin slots for every currency imaginable.

Popping the quarter in the "U.S." slot, Pinky scampered back up to the joystick as the claw shuddered to life. Using the controls, he managed to get the machine to grab a wad of Post-Its, but at the last second the claw lost its grip and returned to its starting position. Pinky's ears flopped down in dejection. None of the claw machines he'd seen except for the construction claw had ever managed to grab what they were supposed to.

"_A rubber band in the correct place works wonders,"_ an astral voice sounding not totally unlike the Brain's reminded Pinky. Pinky pondered this for a moment then, scurrying around the back of the machine, opened a panel and darted inside. The interior of the claw machine was pitch black, but by feeling his way through the complicated wires and gears, he was able to find one single, solitary rubber band. Feeling excitement crawling up the back of his neck—or maybe just a dangling wire—Pinky grasped the piece of elastic and removed it from the machinery. Seeing that the entire thing didn't collapse on him, he emitted a triumphant "_Narf!_" and hurried out the back hatch, closing it and pulling out another quarter. This time, the machine picked up and held on to everything Pinky directed it to.

With a happy string of sounds, Pinky got back to work in preparation of total domination of the world.

————————————————————

If you have ever heard the notion that the entire population of the world could be successfully packed into Rhode Island, then it will not be hard for you to envision the scene at Forbes Hall that afternoon. Every sort of person from every walk of life, of every ethnicity, of every creed, of every height, weight and odor was packed into that one place, all in a massive line for the Brain's claw machine. Even the scientists who had _formerly_ worked at Acme Labs were there, although they had no idea that such an amazing feat could have been made by the same two lab mice they had been experimenting on for so long. All they knew was that they were waiting eagerly for one o'clock to chime so that the spokesman of "Braintech Claw Machines" would allow them to try their luck at acquiring that one treasure sought by all throughout the globe: the Pink Porcupine Diamond.

Pinky and Brain were watching these proceedings with interest from a rafter high up in the ceiling. Brain rubbed his sweating palms together with a nervous tingle of excitement. It was now three minutes until one, and _then_ they'd wheel out the claw machine and—Brain now had to suppress thrilled shivers every time the thought came to mind—they would rule the world. Now, however, Pinky tapped him inquisitively on the shoulder.

"Uh, Brain," he whispered, "should I go out and start taking over the, um, the money-printing places now?" That had been their plan; Brain would monitor the success of the claw machine at the Hall while Pinky in the mechanical suit borrowed an airplane and secured the mints with the help of some unionized trained iguanas that the Brain had bought out.

Brain shook his head, his heart throbbing madly with anticipation. "Remain a few minutes longer," he commanded breathlessly as he watched even more people pour into the main presentation room of the Hall. "At least do not leave until the first person has put their coins in." In a display of companionship that the Brain seldom displayed, he patted Pinky on the back. "You're the one who actually _found_ the diamond, Pinky; you deserve to view the first moment of its triumph!"

Pinky beamed. If he was proud _now_, wait 'till the Brain discovered the improvement Pinky had made to the claw machine!

At last only one minute remained until one o'clock, and the two mice scampered back down to ground level. Weaving carefully through the sea of human feet, Pinky reached the light control panel and dimmed the lights significantly, leaving on one spotlight pointing towards a stage at the front of the room. The gossiping humans instantly shushed as on the stage a very small, white mouse wheeled out a black-and-red claw machine with a newly painted "Braintech" label in yellow on the front. Puffing and wheezing from the effort, Brain finally gave the huge contraption one last push—and the enshrined Pink Porcupine Diamond captured the entire beam of the spotlight, refracting the glare back at the audience like a small, pink disco ball.

"Oooooooh," the population of the world marveled as one. You could practically hear the _cha-CHING!_ as little dollar signs erupted into the air around their heads.

The Brain cleared his throat into a microphone as Pinky scrambled onstage next to him. As part of their disguises, both mice were wearing business suits and ties apprehended from little "Ken" dolls they'd found at Goodwill. Brain cleared his throat again, and this time all noise ceased as his voice echoed distinctly across the entire room.

"Good day, citizens of the world," he announced, trying his best to keep a stony expression although his facial muscles continued to twitch into the shape of a thoroughly dastardly grin. "I am Don Cerebro, wealthy CEO of Braintech International, and I am very proud to announce that after so many long years of people searching for the Pink Porcupine Diamond, _I have found it!_"

Nobody disagreed on this point. The diamond was still tantalizingly visible on top of the pile of one billion packing peanuts. ...Well, more accurately, nine hundred ninety-nine million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred _seventy-seven_; Pinky had taken the "peanuts" part literally, and twenty-three of the billion were now settled in his stomach.

"Therefore, myself being a very generous mou—er, man," Brain continued, his lungs pumping harder in order to keep his excitement from his voice, "I present to you a unique opportunity: a chance to _win_ the diamond simply by trying out the new Braintech Claw Machine!"

A vocal few protested the sensibility of this, giving away such a valuable prize in a claw machine, but they were quickly hushed by everyone else lest the chance for terrible wealth be snatched away from them. Watching the complete pandemonium, Brain simply could no longer contain himself, and his last proclamation came out with a bellow: "_NOW, PEOPLES OF THE WORLD, PREPARE TO TEST YOUR LUCK!_"

There was a huge thundering noise, and part of the Earth's crust moved a few feet to the left as everyone in the world dashed madly to be the first in line for the claw machine.

Standing on a pedestal safely out of the way of the throng, Pinky and Brain waited with bated breath as the first man walked nervously up to the machine. He was somewhat tall, with a solid frame, reddish-peach complexion, brown hair and lightly-sprinkled mustache and beard. He polished his glasses on his sleeve before pulling out his wallet, grabbing a quarter and, with some difficulty, finding the "U.S." slot on the machine and popping it in. The Brain's pulse raced with excitement as the machine whirred, the man grabbed the joystick and finally—

The Pink Porcupine Diamond tumbled out of the prize chute and into the man's waiting hands, where he grabbed it up with a triumphantly amazed cry of "I GOT IT!"

Brain's jaw dropped all the way to the floor.

Everything around him seemed to have taken on an unreal quality as the man held up the diamond in celebration, the entire world population became stunned, then indignant, then finally every human on the planet except the lucky man began to trash Forbes Hall in protest before storming away and proclaiming war on each other (as usual). The Brain stood there speechlessly for quite some time after everyone else had left, and only after Pinky hesitantly coughed was the world's _almost_-ruler able to speak.

"How...how is that _possible?_" he gaped. "That machine...that machine actually _allowed him to get the prize he wanted?_ I built it specifically so it _wouldn't!_"

Still partially stunned, Brain wandered over to the claw machine itself, which had somehow managed to remain almost completely intact when the rest of the Hall was being decimated. Crawling in through the back hatch, Brain felt around for the vital rubber band, but was unable to find it. "The rubber band!" he cried. "It's been removed!"

Pinky popped up then. "Oh, _I_ did that, Brain!" he announced cheerfully. Brain stared at him blankly, the information not registering. "See, Brain," Pinky explained, pantomiming his story, "every time I tried to get something out of the machine, it wouldn't let me! So I crawled in the back and took out the rubber band, and then the claw actually got the—" The implications of this seemingly-innocent thought finally reached Pinky's cranium, and his ears flattened against his skull. "Ohhhhhhhhhhh..." he trailed off quietly.

Brain's body spasmed and he advanced menacingly towards Pinky. "_You_ _removed_ _the rubber band!_" he demanded wildly, shaking the taller mouse by his shoulders. Pinky squeaked, then cringed out of the way of the expected blow. And Brain was about to deliver it as well, until he just shook his head gruffly and dropped Pinky. "What does it matter after all?" he grumbled sourly as Pinky picked himself off the ground and carefully tiptoed back towards the Brain. "If we had actually managed to secure all the currency in the world," Brain continued in the same tone, "that would cause inflation and displacement of economy. The money would be _worthless!_"

There was a slight pause. "Oh," Pinky remarked, scratching his head as he mentally jumbled it all together. "Kinda like what happened in _Wakko's Wish_, right Brain?" He stiffened as he involuntarily emitted a "_Zort!_"

Brain sighed. "Yes, just like in _Wakko's Wish_, Pinky," he reaffirmed, beginning to walk out of the wrecked presentation hall. He turned back. "Now hurry up! We must return to the lab to get over our jet lag and plan for tomorrow night!"

Pinky trotted along behind the Brain. "Why?" he asked with a goofy grin, knowing the answer but wanting to hear it again. "What're we going to do _tomorrow_ night, Brain?"

The Brain stared out over the horizon towards the imposing building of Acme Labs. "The same thing we do _every_ night, Pinky," he replied as he headed off towards it. "_TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!_"

The music returned.

"_They're Pinky,_

_They're Pinky and the_

_Brain Brain Brain Brain Brain—"_

"And shut off that radio!" Brain commanded as the fanfiction drew to a close.

—**the end—**

———————————————————————————————————————

_Back in Acme Labs, I close the document "Brain vs. the Claw Machine" and set my PowerBook G3 to "Sleep". I've finally finished. I slump back in my chair with a relieved sigh that will probably cause an earthquake in China._

_A little mouse pops up from behind my computer, a lanky white creature with a protrudant red nose, ruffled fur and a slight overbite. He jumps on top of the black laptop and leans backwards, chuckling._

"_That was fun! _Zort!_" he comments. "I've never been in France before."_

"_Neither have I, Pinky," I confess. "All that stuff, barring watching movies set in France, reading the Encyclopedia Britannica entry and grabbing an article off was totally made up. So there were probably lots of errors in it."_

_Pinky cocks his head thoughtfully. "Wuh?" he asks. "I didn't notice." Then he remembers what he's said before. "Oh, right, that's 'cause I wasn't in France before that. Sorry."_

"_That's not true," I correct him, sitting up as I draw on my nearly encyclopedic wealth of _Pinky and the Brain_-related knowledge. "You were there in 'Napoleon Brainaparte', even though that was Medieval France, and in 'Around the World in Eighty Narfs', which happen to be two of my favorite episodes."_

_Pinky scratches his head, then apparently decides to take my knowledge at face value. "All right." He sits silently for about ten seconds more before feeling compelled to emit a "_Narf!_"_

"_Incidentally," I comment, "I found this on Wikipedia, but did you know that 'Narf' actually originated with a guy named Eddie Fitzgerald who worked on _Tiny Toon Adventures_ who would say randomly that?"_

_At this, Pinky sits bolt upright. "Really?"_

"_Yup." I've only just learned that. "In fact, you were a caricature of him."_

_Pinky sits in silence for a moment, then out of nowhere asks, "Well, in the story, what about that part with, ummmmm, the coal processing plant? How come that was so short?"_

_I wave the question away. "You could've just listened to the Brain, I mean, he's the one with the superior intellect and all. Just like he said, that was supposed to be the climax before I realized that there wasn't enough material to stretch out." I rub my neck embarrassedly. "Plus, that was ALSO from the Encyclopedia Britannica—and a pretty darn old one—so if there's some new way to do it now, don't blame me, I had no idea."_

"_I'm not gonna blame you," Pinky reassures me, chuckling as if I had said something ineffably ridiculous. Then he pauses. "Brain might, though."_

_I roll my eyes. "Well, DUH."_

_Pinky points at a string of type on the computer. "How come you're writing all this down?" he asks as I type 'How come you're writing all this down?'._

"_Oh, it's just that it might be helpful to someone reading," I explain, quickly typing as I say it. "You know, like a 'Sorry for any places I might've messed up' and explaining why I—" I suddenly pause in horror as my eyes widen painfully. "Oh my god, this is just like those things at the end of _The Magic School Bus!_"_

_As my self-respect melts before my eyes, Pinky tilts his head in contemplation. "Wuh? I thought you got the idea from Mr., ummm, Acosta Perez José," he remarks, belatedly adding, "Ramiro."_

_Salvation having been given, I sit back up again. "That's right!" I cry, thankful for absolvence from anything remotely resembling educational TV. Then I slap my forehead. "Oh, MAN! I could've used that as an in-joke in the story!"_

"Fjord?_" Pinky asks, his ears perking up._

"_An in-joke," I explain. "You know, a joke that references something else without directly saying so. Like...like that big section talking about 'that unrelated panther diamond'! I never actually SAID anything about _The Pink Panther_, but anyone who knew it would have gotten those jokes. Plus, with all those random-sounding names and phrases like 'Maurice the Coal Guy' and 'planet-sized cerebrum', and even the description of the winning guy at the end, all of which are just little in-jokes probably only I would get." I pause. "Since there're so many jokes like that throughout the course of the story I thought I'd put a guide to them in this section back here like in _A Very Muppets Mystery_, but..." My eyes light up, and I turn to the mouse sitting on my laptop. "Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"_

_He scratches his head. "I THINK so, Crackpot," he replies, "but aren't the flippers a bit excessive?"_

_I'm about to answer, but then I fall back on this thought. "Well, MAYBE," I answer, "but combined with the '_Je Ne C'est Troz_' of the—" I suddenly stop and shake my head vigorously. "No, no, I meant the OTHER one."_

"_Oh," Pinky realizes, his tail thumping from side to side in interest. "You mean that since you're too lazy to type them all out now, instead you'll send the list to the people who ask?"_

"_YEAH!" I confirm, getting into the idea. "And, uh, maybe if anyone can actually guess, maybe fifteen or twenty of them—barring the HUGE _Pink Panther_ gag—without seeing the list can win a cameo in one of my new fanfics!" I grab a little sheet of paper I've been keeping on my desk. "There's, um, about forty in-jokes in total, so that's half or less to find!" Skimming the list again, though, I halt. "But to guess even THAT much, they'd have to have my sort of oddball knowledge, like an intimate knowledge of all of Douglas Adams's works, a somewhat complete collection of _Pinky and the Brain_ comic books, and the first volume of the DVDs!"_

_The thoughts seem to be running through Pinky's mind at breakneck speed. "So that'd be, uhhhh, sort of test to see who can think like you?" he asks._

_I shiver compulsively. "If there is anyone like that, I pity them."_

_Pinky's tail starts thumping against the keyboard again, accidentally tapping random keygslhahfpohfldnfldnlknlkhfs."Anything else?"_

_I consider this, then shake my head. "I think that's it."_

"Poit!_" Pinky agrees. Suddenly, another voice enters the conversation._

"_Pinky?" comes a deep, mousy voice from the other end of the lab. "Pinky, where are you! Don't you remember that we're going to take over the world tonight?"_

_I quickly unplug my PowerBook and stick it under my arm, heading for the lab's back door. "I better go!" I whisper to Pinky, who nods energetically and waves._

"_See you next story!" he calls. "_ZORT!_"_


End file.
